The amount an area gets from the federal government for various programs is largely based on population. Numbers are clout. The states with the most people get the largest representation in Congress. That's a downer for Ohio, which will lose two seats in the House of Representatives. Fortunately, the Columbus area will continue to have two seats.
Numbers are indicators of where people want to be - on local, state and national configurations.
For instance, the population growth in central Ohio far outstripped that in the rest of the state, which merely inched ahead. The percentage of growth during the last decade was 12 percent in Columbus, 10.6 percent in Franklin County and 0.5 percent in the state as a whole. The Cleveland metropolitan area, though, is still the most populous in Ohio, with Cincinnati's second and Columbus' third. Nationally, during the 1980s people fled the Northeast and Midwestern cities and headed south and west in large numbers. Some industrial cities took a big hit.