Every now and then, you see something that’s a holy (smokes!) moment. And an old number-crunching author/researcher named Charles Hayslett provided one this time.
Hayslett has researched Georgia for decades and writes a blog called Trouble in God’s Country, which documents rural counties dying on the vine.
Recently, Hayslett wrote “Mapping the death of rural Georgia,” a sober piece demonstrating that concept in bleak outlines. Years ago, he started compiling state data concerning the number of births and deaths registered in each Georgia county.
In 2017, he made a presentation at the initial meeting of the Georgia House Rural Development Council, held in Tifton.
He showed legislators a map from 1994 that indicated 12 of Georgia’s 159 counties had more deaths than births. That number stayed relatively constant until after the Great Recession of 2008. Then the numbers took off.