NEWTON'S LAW: SOLUTIONS TO CENSUS PROBLEMS ARE RESTING IN OUR ... UH, HANDS

The business of growth is a curious one. Environmentalists fret that the world is becoming overpopulated. Municipal officials complain that their cities have been sold short by the Census Bureau.

Small is beautiful to those who want to preserve the planet. Small is calamity to those who sell population as progress.

No one blames the civic officials for their census concerns. The count only takes place every ten years and it costs billions of dollars to do; as citizens, they want the work done right. Besides, census numbers are used every day of the next decade as a criterion for all types of federal planning and all varieties of monetary distributions.

Since no one really knows how many people there are in America, and since the federal government is generally perceived as capable of botching higher arithmetic, people in municipal administration feel they may as well contest the findings, even if self-satisfaction is the only benefit.

Self-satisfaction should not be confused with solace, and especially not with community comfort. When the city of Cape Girardeau appealed its 1990 population count with hard numbers, documentation of residential construction, the Census Bureau remained for the most part unmoved.

Numbers matter in the growth game, but only in the federal government's employment of them. Washington's numbers are like all numbers, only more so. To view them otherwise would command comparisons of apples and oranges or peaches and pears, or other less fruitful irrelevancies.

Mathematical contradictions aside, the search goes on for why Cape Girardeau seems to be growing, but isn't really, not in terms of actual human inhabitants.

The Census Bureau says that Cape Girardeau gained slightly in population during the 1980s, from 34,361 to 34,438, while Cape Girardeau County experienced a 4.8 percent growth. There are 61,633 people living in the county, up from 58,837 ten years before.

Various "components of change," as supplied by the Missouri Department of Health, indicate that there were 8,013 births in the county during the 1980s and 5,214 deaths. This led to a positive "natural change" in the county of 2,799 people.

The "net migration," which is the change in population minus the natural change (that is, 2,796 minus 2,799) is a negative 3.

Got all that?

There are various theories on how an area can boost its population. Prosperity is a sure way; nothing succeeds like success. Annexation is suggested by some; snatch up those outlying subdivisions, tie in a few sewers, re-route a few police patrols, and the numbers climb.

Individuals who care about population growth have little control over prosperity and annexation; they have even less control (exactly none) over death.

How can people take this matter into their own hands? Well, there's always the birth rate.

According to my calculations, Cape Girardeau County in the 1980s had one birth per 7.69 people.

By contrast, Jefferson County, which has a 17 percent population growth in the last decade, had one birth per 6.3 people. In Franklin County, where there was a 13 percent population growth, there was one birth per 6.55 people.

In St. Charles County, with its astonishing growth rate of almost 48 percent, there was one birth per 6.75 people.

Viewed in this manner, we needn't fault Cape Girardeau for not being productive enough; instead, we can blame the county for not being reproductive enough.

The answer to the census dilemma seems simple enough: if you want more people, make more people.

Short of having Steve Garvey move to the city, the rest of us have our work cut out. If raising the population is a community goal, let's get busy.