It’s official: We’re witnessing one of America’s worst economies since the Great Depression. A third of us are concerned about losing our jobs, according to a September 2008 Associated Press and Yahoo! News survey; half worry about making mortgage and credit card payments, and 70 percent fret over shrinking retirement accounts. With all these money troubles, can people still afford to do genealogy?
Last fall, we asked you via a Family Tree Magazine E-mail Update questionnaire how the downturn is affecting your research. The good news: You’re not giving up your hobby. Of the 581 respondents, 66 percent spent less than $500 on genealogy last year, and half expect to spend about the same this year. Twenty-six percent think they’ll spend more.
About 40 percent haven’t changed how they research because of money. But the rest have, and more than half of those are learning less about their families as a result. Here’s how the tough economy has trickled down into genealogists’ pedigree pursuits.
Instead of incurring the expense of traveling to out-of-town repositories, at least a fifth of you are giving the Web a workout. This comment exemplified the efforts to save on gas, lodging and parking: “ Internet, Internet, Internet, as opposed to travel to record repositories.”
Rural residents are even more affected. “I’m at least an hour from anywhere,” wrote one respondent, “and the price of fuel has stopped me from traveling to libraries, cemeteries and other places.”
That’s reflected in tourism figures: The number of US domestic air passengers fell 3. 5 percent in July over the previous year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Labor Day 2008 was the third consecutive summer holiday with travel declines, reported AAA. Fewer genealogists go to national conferences: Though official figures weren’t available, an estimated 800 attended September’s Federation of Genealogical Societies < fgs.org> conference, compared to about 1,500 the year before. Roughly 1,600 turned out for the National Genealogical Society (NGS) <www. ngsgenealogy.org> conference in April, compared to 2,000 in 2007. ( Conference coordinator Jeanne Lund notes NGS is pleased with its 2008 numbers, and expected the 2007 conference to be bigger because of its location.)
Family history Web sites often benefit when you research at home. Genealogy was the third highest gaining online category in unique visitors (behind politics and career services) in September, according to the Web-watching service comScore. Interestingly, even though 15 percent of our survey takers mentioned eliminating online subscriptions, Ancestry.com continues to grow. In October, paid subscriptions for Ancestry.com sites in the United States and eight other countries stood at 900,000, an increase of 80,000 over the previous year.
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