55 Million Americans Live Amidst Population Decline
That’s About 17%
I’ve been doing some writing about long-run population history. It’s a fun topic, and I’m still exploring the data that I put together. Yesterday’s blog post was a super-duper long look at ante-bellum urbanization, but for today, I’m just going to give you one chart:
For each decade, I identified counties that experienced population decline between Censuses, but then excluded counties with more than 20% decline. That’s an arbitrary number, but it has a reason: sudden sharp declines usually reflect a county being sliced up into new counties, such as when an independent city is formed. Obviously this threshold method is imperfect, but I think I caught most of the significant county-redrawing issues.
The trend is interesting. From 1800 to 1900, roughly 10% of Americans lived in counties with declining populations. That figure rose sharply to 1920, and remained elevated until 2000, when it dropped dramatically down to past levels. But since 2000, the share of Americans living amidst decline has risen again.
I’ve got no idea what this data means or what you should do with it, but it seemed to me there is probably somebody out there who is interested.
Check out my Podcast about the history of American migration.
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I’m a graduate of the George Washington University’s Elliott School with an MA in International Trade and Investment Policy, and an economist at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. I like to learn about migration, the cotton industry, airplanes, trade policy, space, Africa, and faith. I’m married to a kickass Kentucky woman named Ruth.
My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I did not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research. More’s the pity.
