So tomorrow’s Halloween (stop the presses!). Before the goblins and gremlins start traipsing around your neighborhood in all their fantastical finery, we are here to help assess what trick-or-treater traffic volume you might statistically expect. The finding: It depends on where you live. And in general, the volume’s going down.
The Census Bureau tells us that the prime trick-or-treating ages are children aged 5 to 14. (Aside: they tell us a lot more about Halloween, take a look.) Using that age group as estimated by ESRI Business Analyst data, we mapped counties with 15 percent or more of their population age 5 to 14 … and what we see (below) are higher concentrations of trick-or-treater density in the Midwest and West (and Texas) than in the Southeast and very few hot spots for candy consumption in the Northeast.
![US 5to14 Image by County](https://33n.atlantaregional.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/US-5to14-Image-by-County.png)
Below, let’s zoom to the Southeast, where we can get a close look at Georgia — only a few counties jump out with 15% or more of the population between 5 and 14 . They are all inside or on the cusp of metro areas. Two of the shaded areas are Forsyth and Paulding in the Atlanta metro; for more on them, keep reading.
![SE 5to14 Image by County](https://33n.atlantaregional.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SE-5to14-Image-by-County.png)
Now to the Atlanta area: Below we see some concentrations of trick-or-treater density in suburbs — along GA-400 to the north, I-85 to the northeast, and I-75 to the northwest. There are only a few large pockets of 5-14 concentrations in the Atlanta metro south of I-20.
![Region 5to14 Image by Zip](https://33n.atlantaregional.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Region-5to14-Image-by-Zip.png)
Enough with these menacing maps and on to terrifying tables! The one below shows growth in and concentration of the 5 to 14 demographic across all 20 counties of the Atlanta travel modeling area. In that area, looking at the 5 to 14 grouping, there are nearly 814,000 scary encounters possible tomorrow evening … way, way, way fewer if it rains. There’s not too much difference in 5 to 14 shares for 2019 in the 10 counties of ARC (13.3 percent) and across the larger 20-county area (13.6 percent). Among the 20 counties, there’s a lot more variation, with Fayette at the low end (12.2 percent) and Forsyth seeing the highest share of ages 5 to 14 (16.9 percent). Only 3 of the 20 counties — Forsyth, Paulding, and Barrow — have 15 percent or more of their population fall into the trick-or-treating target tranche.
Change over time (from 2010 to 2019) shows that Forsyth County had a net gain of over 10,000 persons age 5 to 14, which is about 35 percent of the entire net increase in the 20-county population. Now, that’s in a county that is only about 4 percent of the 2019 total 20-county population. Over the period of 2010-2019, though, the share of persons age 5 to 14 fell in every single one of the 20 counties, and eight actually experienced a net decline in population age 5 to 14, led by Fayette, which had a net loss of 2,700 followed closely by Henry at a loss of 2,600.
And now to close the creaky dungeon door on this post: a look at subcounty areas. In the final table below, the trends of widespread declines in the 5 to 14 demographic are again apparent. Of the 945 tracts across our 20-county area, 412 of them (44 percent) had a net loss in those age 5 to 14 between 2010 and 2019. The trick-or-treating target tranche declined in 18 of 20 census tracts in Fayette, 19 of 25 in Henry, and 12 of 20 in Douglas. Conversely, persons aged 5 to 14 increased in 82 percent of Forsyth tracts, 69 percent of Fulton tracts, and 61 percent of Gwinnett tracts.
![tract_table_5to14](https://33n.atlantaregional.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/tract_table_5to14.png)