households move into the region in quest of the unfilled jobs and the population expands. In regions where natural increase of the labor force is adequate, no migration will be necessary. However, the basic and secondary increases in jobs and incomes may reverse historic patterns of out-migration in economically stagnant or declining regions. Such regions are exemplified by rural areas and old manufacturing areas. Reducing negative net migration among persons in their productive and child-bearing years will contribute to the growth of regional population, even if it only reduces the rate of decline. Finally, in those regions with large populations, low dependency ratios,* and an expanding economy, the introduction of a new basic firm of moderate size may have no noticeable effect on population growth in the region. Thus, as these examples illustrate, the magnitude of the effect that a new basic economic activity will have upon net population changes is a function of the number of basic and secondary jobs created relative to the assimilative capacity of the region where assimilative capacity refers to the economic characteristics (e.g., industrial mix and integration, and labor force characteristics such as unemployment, size, availability, and worker skills), and demographic characteristics (e.g., population size and density, dependency ratio, fertility, mortality and net migration) of the region. In those instances where new basic economic activity is attracted to areas having relatively low capacities to absorb the basic, indirect, and income-induced changes in employment and income, problems of providing housing, health care, education, safety, and recreational services arise. Examples of such problems are well-documented in the case histories of western energy ’’boom towns.” For example, with an exogenous increase in energy resource development in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, 8,000 new basic and secondary jobs were created between 1970 and 1974. Because the pool of available workers in and around Sweetwater County was insufficient to fill the number of new jobs, the population jumped from 18,900 to 37,000 persons during this period. With this almost two-fold increase in population, a shortage of 1,400 homesites was experienced. The presence of this new population also created immense pressure on the public infrastructure in Sweetwater County. During this period, the county experienced an unabated shortage of 124 school classrooms for new *The dependency ratio is the number of persons under 16 and over 65 years of age divided by the total population.
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