Visualizing Franklin’s Recovery
IS FRANKLIN A CITY ON THE RISE?
In 2022, the mood among the Telling True Stories Project interviewees was significantly more optimistic than the mood in 2017. When looking for data to support this Franklin vibe shift, we found the following:
POPULATION GROWTH
Despite Franklin’s economic struggles since the 1950s, U.S. Census data shows that the city has experienced seventy years of slow but steady population growth. From 1960 to 1990, the population grew by an average of 6% per decade. This period of strong growth plateaued in the following two decades, which saw Franklin’s population stall, inching upward at an average of less than 0.5% growth per decade from 1990 to 2010. Since 2010, Franklin has experienced a slight uptick in its population, averaging 4% growth during this period.
While population growth has remained relatively steady, Franklin’s average citizen has aged considerably. In 2010, the median age in Franklin was 38, while 2020 figures show it is now around 47. As one would expect, while the population in Franklin has aged, the percentage of school-aged children in the city has fallen from 20% in 2010 to 15% in 2020.
SCHOOL ENROLLMENT
Arguably, school enrollment numbers are the single best indicator of community health. The decision to enroll a child in a school system is an act of trust by each parent: trust that their child will receive a decent education, trust that the community will care for their child, and trust in the future of that community.
The New Hampshire Department of Education school enrollment numbers indicate that since at least the 2007–2008 school year (the earliest figures available on the DoE website) the Franklin School District has been hemorrhaging students. The school system has lost nearly 400 students in less than two decades with the greatest losses occurring just after the great recession and then again between 2014 and 2018. Since the 2019–2020 school year, the school district numbers have plateaued, lending some credence to the cautious optimism expressed by most of the community leaders concerning Franklin’s schools.
POVERTY
Poverty is pernicious. Talk to any community leader in town and they are likely to provide you with a litany of statistics concerning poverty in Franklin. In our interviews, we have heard statistics concerning the rates of poverty among single mothers, the numbers of Franklin School District parents who qualify for free and reduced school lunches, unemployment numbers, health care accessibility rates, overdose deaths, and numbers concerning the homeless population. While community leaders differed in the ways they talked about poverty, all agreed it is still an important issue affecting many Franklin families. Despite this, there was a general consensus among them that, city-wide, poverty is in decline.
In order to verify this sentiment, we decided to peruse a few widely available statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS data is based on annual sample surveys and, as with all sample surveys, within these statistics, there is a margin of error. Therefore, when reading the ACS statistics, it is best to not get hung up on any single number but to look for trends over time.
From nearly every measure, the ACS data confirms the community leaders’ view that Franklin is indeed a city on the rise. Here we highlight three statistical trends concerning poverty found in the ACS: citizens living below the poverty line, population without health insurance, and employment rate.
CITIZENS LIVING BELOW THE POVERTY LINE: According to the ACS, the number of Franklin citizens living below the poverty line increased during the Great Recession, peaked at above 20% in 2014, and has fallen steadily since then. According to the ACS, the current poverty rate in the City of Franklin hovers around 7%, which is roughly consistent with the current New Hampshire state average.
POPULATION WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE: According to the ACS, the number of Franklin citizens without health insurance has been in decline since the Great Recession. In 2014, 14% of Franklin citizens lacked health insurance. This number dropped to around 8% in 2017 and has remained steady since then.
EMPLOYMENT RATE: We see a similar trend in the ACS employment data that we see in the data on citizens living below the poverty line, just in reverse. From 2010 to 2014, we see a clear drop in the Franklin employment rate. In 2014, the employment rate in Franklin bottomed out at roughly 55%. Since this time, the employment rate has grown steadily to 61%.
Taken together, these three ACS data sets indicating poverty in Franklin demonstrate that the low point for many citizens in town came right around the year 2014, the year before the current revitalization efforts got underway in Franklin.
HOME PRICES
Single-family home prices have been considerably depressed in Franklin since at least the year 2000. During this time, the price of a single-family home has hovered around 33% below the state median, and Franklin’s recovery from the Great Recession’s housing correction lagged behind the state by several years. State-wide, single-family home prices hit their nadir in 2011 with a median home price of $201,700. Home prices in Franklin, meanwhile, continued to fall until 2014, when the median home price in the city hit $146,216.
At a whopping 40.5% difference, the widest gap in price between the median single-family home in New Hampshire vs in Franklin occurred in 2021. In the year since then, home prices in Franklin have risen significantly. The current gap of 29% now sits below the historical average of 33%.
CONCLUSION
Viewed together, the data we collected clearly indicates that the economic situation in Franklin has started to improve. What surprised us was that three separate economic indicators — median home price, employment rate, and citizens living below the poverty line — each pointed to a single year, 2014, as the economic low point for the Three Rivers City.
The current revitalization efforts began at the Citizens Institute on Rural Design’s “Franklin for a Lifetime” workshop in April 2015. It seems no coincidence that just when a committed group of activists, business owners, government workers, and concerned citizens started meeting and planning to bring life back to New Hampshire’s smallest city, important indicators show the economic picture in Franklin started to improve.
While everyone we interviewed during this project acknowledged that there is still much work to be done, what is clear from the data is that the cautious optimism expressed by nearly everyone in town is more than justified.
All the information in this article was compiled by Tom Morgan. The article was written by Tom Morgan.
Telling True Stories is a Proctor Academy production.
