Earlier this month, the 14th Annual Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report, compiled by the Social Science Research Center at Old Dominion University, announced its 2023 results. The survey polled residents on a number of core issues, collecting both demographic data and survey responses.
Overall, 62.3% of residents rated their quality of life in the Hampton Roads area as “excellent” or “good”, a 7% decline from 2022. Rather than one particular factor being responsible for this decline, it appears that smaller declines in a number of different areas may be to blame.
42.3% of Hampton Roads residents listed the region’s economy as “excellent” or “good”, while 43.2% listed it as “fair”. While these numbers may seem troubling, they remain consistent with last year’s polling. When asked if their family was better or worse off financially compared to a year ago, residents gave similar responses to last year as well, suggesting that the economy is largely stagnant.
Housing prices, however, were a major sticking point. While polling data on housing price sentiments was largely consistent with last year’s data, the statistics themselves were quite bad. 64.1% of respondents stated that now was a bad time to buy a house, citing inflation as a primary reason.
Areas with major year-over-year declines included healthcare and work burnout. When asked about their level of work burnout on a scale from zero to ten, respondents gave a 5.6, up from a 4.8 in 2022. Likewise, when polled on the quality of healthcare in the region, 63.5% of respondents stated that quality was “excellent” or “good”, which is down 10% from the previous year.
Residents listed abortion as a core issue for future elections, with 82% stating abortion would be at least “somewhat important”.
Of some concern, however, are the demographics polled for this data. Only 23% of respondents were Black/ African American, compared to 31% of the region’s population being Black, according to the 2010 census. Likewise, the average age of respondents was 52 years old, compared to the census average of 35.4. This suggests an older and whiter, and thus more affluent, poll of respondents than the general population.
