In the 1990s, Forsyth County is the fastest growing county in
Georgia. So which is the
fastest shrinking county?
Providing the answers to questions like that makes “The
Georgia County Guide“ a mighty
unpopular book at times, says the book’s creator.
“There’s a lot of controversy in the book because it ranks
statistical data by county,” said
Doug Bachtel, a rural sociologist with the University of Georgia
College of Family and
Consumer Sciences. “It’s like documenting that your daughter is
ugly.”
Rankings are fine if they don’t tell you most counties are
better off than you in such
serious areas as per-capita income, crime rate or births to
unwed mothers.
“The people at the top don’t mind a bit,” Bachtel said. “They’re
not the ones who write the
letters to us, though.”
But the rankings are important. “People are quite interested in
the rankings,” he said. “The
rankings can help put together important pictures of your
community.”
The 16th annual edition of “The Georgia County Guide” is being
released this month. It
includes data on scores of topics in 17 areas on every Georgia
county.
The book is $15. A Windows data base is available for $90. You
may order either through
the county
extension office. Or send a request, with a check to The
Georgia County
Guide, to Ag Business Office, 203 Conner Hall, The University of
Georgia, Athens, GA
30602-7506.
Don’t wait too long to order. They never print that many
books. “We sell about 3,000 a
year,” said Sue Boatright, the data collection coordinator for
the book.
Bachtel began compiling “The Georgia County Guide” in 1981. It
was much harder work
then. “I spent the Christmas break that first year ranking
counties by population from one
to 159 from 1930 to 1980,” he said. “Now, that sort of thing is
done by computer in an
instant.”
He originally produced the book “so a company considering moving
to Georgia could find
the facts and figures it needed,” he said. “But after we got
into it, we found that even
people living here needed that information.”
Bachtel is quick to point out that he isn’t “the state’s bean-
counter.” The book’s data
comes from a range of sources, all available to the public.
“It’s not ‘my’ data,” he said. “We just put it in an easy-to-use
form.”
Poring over data on such topics as crime, poverty and leading
causes of death, though,
takes its toll.
“One of the prerequisites is that you have to have a sense of
humor,” Bachtel said.
“Sometimes it’s overwhelming. I don’t watch the local news
anymore. I don’t want to put
faces with the numbers.”
