This story in today's Maui News kind of freaked me out, although I suppose in the back of my head I always knew it was true: the percentage of adult residents who were not born on Maui or in Hawai'i has now reached 37%.
"... A few years ago, Maui: the Valley Isle became Maui: the Magic Isle.
And now it seems the slogan could be changed to Maui: the Mainland Isle.
The number of Maui adults raised in the islands has dropped from 56 percent to 43 percent since 1988, while the population of Mainland transplants to Maui has leaped from 27 percent to more than 37 percent in the same time frame, an SMS study has found. Most newcomers to Hawaii are most likely to move to Maui, the report also concluded.
“Actually, those numbers don’t surprise me,” said Gladys Baisa, the recently retired executive director of Maui Economic Opportunity Inc., who grew up in Paia’s Skill Village and has noticed the dramatic changes to the place she calls home. “It just verifies what we’re seeing. When I go to Foodland in Pukalani now, I might know one or two people besides the staff. In the old days, when you went to the market you knew everyone.”
The demographics have gone in the same direction around the state, but not as sharply as on Maui. In 1998, SMS showed that 59 percent of residents statewide said they had been born in Hawaii. That number in the most recent survey dropped to 52 percent, said Hersh Singer, chairman of SMS. That’s still nearly 10 percent more than remain on Maui.
“These people (transplants) are now becoming almost a majority,” Singer told The Maui News. “We are getting influenced more by the other states.”
Those newcomers are also more likely to value having fun over having friends and family, the study showed.
About 20 percent of Maui’s population was born in another country, up 3 percent since 1988.
According to Census Bureau data, the population of Maui island grew from 91,361 in 1990 to 117,644 in 2000, while the county population grew from 100,504 to 128,241. While there are no estimates for Maui island since then, the Census Bureau estimates that Maui County’s population increased by another 10,000 people by 2004 to 138,347.
The trend toward a more Mainland Maui has increased in the last six years, when newcomers to the state have jumped by 5 percent each year. The previous 13 years, the state saw an average annual increase of 2 percent of new residents. Because those transplants prefer Maui more than any other island, according to the study, they’ve had a greater impact here.
But it’s not just newcomers pouring into the islands that has tipped the scales. The exodus of lifelong residents who no longer can afford to live in the land of their birth has contributed, too...."
It's no wonder whenever I go to a local hangout that I see more Caucasian faces than local ones...sad, eh? It's kind of what's happened up here too...it's rare to meet a person who can say s/he was born in this state.
Hold on to whatever is left of "local", because pretty soon it will only exist in people's memories or in the Bishop Museum.
Miulang
"... A few years ago, Maui: the Valley Isle became Maui: the Magic Isle.
And now it seems the slogan could be changed to Maui: the Mainland Isle.
The number of Maui adults raised in the islands has dropped from 56 percent to 43 percent since 1988, while the population of Mainland transplants to Maui has leaped from 27 percent to more than 37 percent in the same time frame, an SMS study has found. Most newcomers to Hawaii are most likely to move to Maui, the report also concluded.
“Actually, those numbers don’t surprise me,” said Gladys Baisa, the recently retired executive director of Maui Economic Opportunity Inc., who grew up in Paia’s Skill Village and has noticed the dramatic changes to the place she calls home. “It just verifies what we’re seeing. When I go to Foodland in Pukalani now, I might know one or two people besides the staff. In the old days, when you went to the market you knew everyone.”
The demographics have gone in the same direction around the state, but not as sharply as on Maui. In 1998, SMS showed that 59 percent of residents statewide said they had been born in Hawaii. That number in the most recent survey dropped to 52 percent, said Hersh Singer, chairman of SMS. That’s still nearly 10 percent more than remain on Maui.
“These people (transplants) are now becoming almost a majority,” Singer told The Maui News. “We are getting influenced more by the other states.”
Those newcomers are also more likely to value having fun over having friends and family, the study showed.
About 20 percent of Maui’s population was born in another country, up 3 percent since 1988.
According to Census Bureau data, the population of Maui island grew from 91,361 in 1990 to 117,644 in 2000, while the county population grew from 100,504 to 128,241. While there are no estimates for Maui island since then, the Census Bureau estimates that Maui County’s population increased by another 10,000 people by 2004 to 138,347.
The trend toward a more Mainland Maui has increased in the last six years, when newcomers to the state have jumped by 5 percent each year. The previous 13 years, the state saw an average annual increase of 2 percent of new residents. Because those transplants prefer Maui more than any other island, according to the study, they’ve had a greater impact here.
But it’s not just newcomers pouring into the islands that has tipped the scales. The exodus of lifelong residents who no longer can afford to live in the land of their birth has contributed, too...."
It's no wonder whenever I go to a local hangout that I see more Caucasian faces than local ones...sad, eh? It's kind of what's happened up here too...it's rare to meet a person who can say s/he was born in this state.
Hold on to whatever is left of "local", because pretty soon it will only exist in people's memories or in the Bishop Museum.
Miulang
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