David Elbert is a former business editor and columnist for the Des Moines Register. He now writes about local history for DSM Magzine. 

Paul Simon’s 1977 song “Slip Slidin’ Away” hit home the other day. It’s about a failing romance, although many believe the lyrics are a metaphor for the 1970s downside that followed euphoric times a decade earlier.

For me, “Slip Slidin’ Away” is what happened to Iowa, as our population, educational standards and health care systems slipped away, along with our news media and tolerance for others.

I wish I knew a solution. I don’t.

So, like the song says, I “lie in bed and think of things that might have been.”

And I catalog the losses.

Population

To be fair, Iowa has not experienced substantial population growth for more than a century. Immigrants flooded Iowa in the late 1800s, and by 1900 there were more than 2 million people living here. Since then, our ten-year growth rate averaged just over 3 percent, compared with a national rate of nearly 13 percent.

Lately, things have slowed down for the country and for Iowa. Nationwide the estimated gain from 2020 to 2025 was 3.1 percent, while Iowa’s gain was 1.5 percent.

Three factors are at work.

One is declining U.S. birth rates, which have been falling for decades and crossed a crucial “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman around 2010, before dropping to 1.62 children per women in 2023. (Iowa is doing slightly better, with 1.81 births per woman in 2023.)

The second cause is rising death rates fueled by expiring Baby Boomers who swelled the population after World War II.

Third is immigration, which drives much of the immediate change we see today. For many years, declining populations in Iowa and elsewhere were masked by immigration. But that growth has screeched to a halt. In 2025, net foreign migration to Iowa fell 54 percent, down 6,797.

Another way to look at Iowa’s stagnant population is through the eyes of workers. Iowa’s nonfarm workforce hasn’t varied much between 1,550,000 and 1,575,000 for more than a decade. During the same period, the U.S. workforce grew by more than 7 percent.

Iowa’s stagnant minimum wage doesn’t help. It’s been stuck at $7.25 an hour for 18 years, while five surrounding states have significantly higher minimums, including $15 for Nebraska, Missouri, and Illinois.

Education

Like population, Iowa’s education credentials have drifted away. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, Iowa regularly ranked first or second for K-12 public education. When my children were in school in the 1980s and 90s, Iowa still ranked in the top 10 for public schools. Today, we don’t make the top half and came in at number 27 in US News’ ranking of the 50 states.

Health care

Iowa’s health care system was, like schools, among the best in the country at one time. But today hardly a week goes by when there isn’t a story about new health care problems in rural Iowa, where birthing centers are at a premium, and it is not unusual for residents to drive an hour or more to obtain medical care.

Even Des Moines is starting to feel the pinch with older residents having to schedule appointments months in advance to see specialists in dermatology, cardiac, and orthopedic care.

News media

For much of my life, the Des Moines Register was Iowa’s unifying voice. It was unique among the nation’s daily newspapers because it was distributed statewide and had a news staff that covered all of Iowa. Readers in Davenport, Algona, and Clarinda got the same news and had the same sense of community as folks in Des Moines.

When I joined the Register’s sister newspaper, the afternoon Tribune, in 1975 it had a central Iowa circulation of about 100,000; the Register sold roughly 220,000 daily and around 400,000 Sunday. The Tribune closed in 1982 and by the time I retired in 2012, the Register’s reach had shrunk to fewer than 100,000 subscribers. Today, it’s much worse. In 2024, the Register reported it had 18,000 print subscribers and 6,250 digital subscribers.

Local ownership of local media is also a thing of the past. The once independent Register, along with newspapers in Iowa City and Ames, is owned by Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper chain. Local television stations throughout Iowa, which were once locally owned, are also now the property of a handful of national companies.

Tolerance

“Iowa nice” was a tradition that grew out of shared experiences that came from reading the same newspaper or hearing the same stories on locally owned broadcast media.

That shared sense of community produced the index finger wave that rural drivers flashed to approaching vehicles and the tendency of audiences to give standing ovations at the drop of a hat. It was smiling and sitting in church next to a neighbor whose dog did business on your lawn.

Today, “Iowa nice” is also slip sliding away in our increasingly politically divided state.

It’s like Paul Simon sang: “We work our jobs, collect our pay, believe we’re gliding down the highway, when in fact we’re slip slidin’ away.”