Report predicts area growth

• By JEREMY HARPER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Feb 12, 2009 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:30 a.m.

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Ascension and Livingston parishes will be among the state’s fastest-growing areas over the next two decades, dramatically outpacing the change in East Baton Rouge Parish, the state’s official population projections show.

The populations of the two suburban parishes will more than double by 2030, according to the projections, which were developed last year and released this week.

East Baton Rouge Parish, on the other hand, is expected to peak in 2010 and gradually decline each subsequent five-year period.

The projections offer a look at what parishes would look like over the next 20 years if population trends — birth rate, death rate and migration — over the first half of this decade remain the same.

“They’re a planning tool,” said Troy Blanchard, an LSU sociology professor and demographer who calculated the projections for the state.

Blanchard said the large population increases projected in the suburban Baton Rouge areas would likely create challenges for area policymakers.

“For example, having an extra 100,000 people in a parish — many of which would be commuting to Baton Rouge to go to work — would make for some really interesting policy implications,” he said.

The projections are based on U.S. Census Bureau population and demographic data from 2000-2005. The report assumes these trends will continue through 2030.

The populations for each parish are projected in five-year intervals from 2010 to 2030, and the effects of hurricanes Katrina and Rita were taken into account for some parishes.

That formula predicts the greatest population increases in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas.

The Census Bureau estimated Ascension’s 2005 population was 90,450. The state report projects the parish will grow to 109,030 people in 2010 and 196,140 by 2030.

Livingston is projected to grow at an even greater rate, climbing 88 percent between 2010 and 2030 to reach a population of 242,780.

Those increases would make Livingston and Ascension two of the five fastest-growing parishes in the state at least through 2020, according to the report.