Commentary: Pew's State of the City

Philadelphia in 2016 is a growing city undergoing a sweeping transformation, most evident in the age and diversity of those who live here.

The city's population has risen for nine consecutive years, up a further 5,880 in the most recent count. The increase since 2006 stands at 78,732, a stark reversal after a decrease of nearly 600,000 over the previous five decades.

More compelling, though, are some of the factors that underlie the city's growth, as described in the Pew Charitable Trusts' 2016 State of the City report.

One is age. As the United States has gotten older, Philadelphia has become younger, largely because of the growth of the city's young adult population, the much-discussed millennials. A decade ago, Philadelphia had a median age of 35.3, only a year below the nation's 36.4. In the most recent census, the city's age was down to 33.8, while the national figure had risen to 37.7, a difference of nearly four years. Remarkably, this happened over a time in which the number of children in the city was declining.

Philadelphia is again a city of immigrants, as it had been for most of its history, but not for much of the 20th century. As recently as 1990, Philadelphia had barely more than 100,000 foreign-born residents. Today, it has more than 200,000, mostly from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, with no single nationality accounting for more than 13 percent of the whole.

Partly as a result of this immigrant influx, Philadelphia is becoming increasingly diverse. Twenty-five years ago, only 9 percent of residents identified themselves as something other than African American or non-Hispanic white. Today, that figure is 23 percent and growing - 14 percent Latino, 7 percent Asian, and 2 percent everyone else - creating a richer and more complex civic landscape in one neighborhood after another.

This is a lot of change in a relatively short time. But other aspects of life in Philadelphia have not changed - at least not enough to make much of a difference.

Poverty, arguably Philadelphia's most daunting and intractable problem, falls into that category. At last count, the city's poverty rate stood at 26 percent, down slightly in the last few years but still the highest among the nation's 10 largest cities. More than 400,000 Philadelphians live below the federal poverty line, including 37 percent of children and 43 percent of Latinos.

Helping to explain this poverty and the low median income rate is the low educational attainment. Only slightly more than 1 in 4 Philadelphians over the age of 25 have at least a four-year college degree. That's better than in recent years but far behind many other cities. In Boston, about 300 miles north of Philadelphia, nearly half of all adults are college graduates; in Washington, 130 miles to the south, more than half are.

A number of other indicators also have improved over time but remain troublesome.

In 2015, for instance, unemployment in Philadelphia fell to 7 percent on an annualized basis, the lowest in eight years. But the rate remained higher than the national figure of 5.3 percent and greater than in a number of other cities, including Cleveland and Chicago. The city's job count reached 680,800, the highest since 2002. But it grew by less than 1 percent in 2015, hardly cause for celebration when the national job total increased by more than twice as much.

The number of violent crimes, which has been declining gradually during the last decade, was virtually unchanged in 2015, while homicides rose by 13 percent from historic lows the previous two years. Philadelphia's per capita homicide rate was lower than those in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Washington but higher than those in Boston, Chicago, and Houston.

Home sales increased for the fourth year in a row, and residential building permits came in only slightly lower than the record number in 2014. But civic leaders and neighborhood activists expressed concerns about rising rents, the availability of affordable units, and the sustainability of the housing boom, particularly if the uncertainty and turmoil surrounding the city's school system continue.

For nearly a decade, Philadelphia has been transformed by demographic trends that have produced growing populations across much of urban America. The question is whether those trends are forming a foundation for real progress on the city's most persistent challenges.

Larry Eichel and Katie Martin are with the Pew Charitable Trusts' Philadelphia research initiative, which studies key issues facing Philadelphia.

Visit www.pewtrusts.org/stateofthecity to read the research initiative's latest report, Philadelphia: The State of the City, A 2016 Update.