Census: Aging America

 From the Census Bureau:

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2020 Census Demographic Profile and Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (DHC). These products provide the next round of data available from the 2020 Census, adding more detail to the population counts and basic demographic and housing statistics previously released for the purposes of congressional apportionment and legislative redistricting.

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• The 2020 Census shows the following about the nation’s age and sex composition: Between 2010 and 2020, median age in the U.S. grew older due to an increase in the older population.In 2020, there were 55.8 million people age 65 and over in the United States (16.8% of the total population), up 38.6% from 40.3 million in 2010. This growth primarily reflected the aging baby boom cohort.
• Centenarians grew 50% since 2010, the fastest recent census-to-census percent change for that age group

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• In 1970, after all the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) had been born, half of the population was younger than 28.1 years old. By 2020, the median age was 38.8, an increase of more than 10 years over the past five decades.In 2020, the population age 45 and over accounted for 42% of the total population, up from 27% in 1940, the census before the Baby Boom began.
• The share of the population age 65 and over more than doubled between 1940 and 2020, from less than 7% to nearly 17%.
• In 2020, there were over 73.1 million children under age 18 (22.1% of the total U.S. population), down 1.4% from 74.2 million in 2010. The biggest decline was among the under-5 age group, whose share of the population dropped by 8.9% or 1.8 million. This finding is consistent with the decline in the total number of births and the birth rate for the United States since 2015.
• Among the states in 2020:Fourteen states had a median age over 40, twice as many as in 2010. Twenty-five states had higher shares of population age 65 and older than Florida had in 2010 (17.3%), when it had the highest share of any state. In 2020, Maine had the highest share at 21.8%, followed by Florida (21.2%) and Vermont (20.6%).
• Utah and Maine were the youngest and oldest states (as they were in 2010). Nearly half of Utah’s population was under age 31 while more than half of Maine’s population was over age 45.

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The public can explore these age and sex statistics in two data visualizations:
Exploring Age Groups in the 2020 Census. This interactive map shows certain measures — percent of population, percent change from 2010, percent female and racial and ethnic diversity index and prevalence — for a variety of age groups for the nation, states, counties and census tracts. The visualization also provides ranking lists of the measures.
How Has Our Nation's Population Changed? This interactive visualization shows population pyramids and ranked age and sex measures for the total population, as well as race and Hispanic origin groups, for the nation, states, metropolitan areas, micropolitan areas and counties in 2020, 2010 and 2000.

A series of downloadable ranking tables related to each visualization is also available.

More information about age and sex is also available in the America Counts stories: An Aging U.S. Population With Fewer Children in 2020 and 2020 Census: 1 in 6 People in the United States Were 65 and Over, and two briefs: Age and Sex Composition: 2020 and The Older Population: 2020.

Shrinkage in California

Ben Christopher at CalMatter:

In 2021, it was big news — the “California exodus.” Now, it just looks like the new trend: California’s population is still shrinking.

According to the latest population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, California’s total population declined by more than 500,000 between April 2020 and July 2022.

Put another way, 1 out of 100 people living in California at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic had, two years later, left the state — either by U-Haul or by hearse.

Where’d they all go? 

• Some died, though there were far more births;
• Some left the country, though on net, more immigrants arrived;
• The major driving factor: Californians departing for other states.

Just counting out-of-staters coming in and Californians leaving, the state’s population saw a 871,127 net decline. If you’re wondering why the state lost a congressional seat at the beginning of this decade, this is why.

This isn’t a national problem. It’s a California, New York, Illinois and Louisiana problem. California is one of only 18 states that saw its numbers decline and had the fourth biggest drop as a share of its population.

USA Grows, California and Illinois Shrink

From the Census Bureau:

After a historically low rate of change between 2020 and 2021, the U.S. resident population increased by 0.4%, or 1,256,003, to 333,287,557 in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2022 national and state population estimates and components of change released today.

Net international migration — the number of people moving in and out of the country — added 1,010,923 people between 2021 and 2022 and was the primary driver of growth. This represents 168.8% growth over 2021 totals of 376,029 – an indication that migration patterns are returning to pre-pandemic levels. Positive natural change (births minus deaths) increased the population by 245,080.

“There was a sizeable uptick in population growth last year compared to the prior year’s historically low increase,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Population Division at the Census Bureau. “A rebound in net international migration, coupled with the largest year-over-year increase in total births since 2007, is behind this increase.”
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Increasing by 470,708 people since July 2021, Texas was the largest-gaining state in the nation, reaching a total population of 30,029,572. By crossing the 30-million-population threshold this past year, Texas joins California as the only states with a resident population above 30 million. Growth in Texas last year was fueled by gains from all three components: net domestic migration (230,961), net international migration (118,614), and natural increase (118,159).

Florida was the fastest-growing state in 2022, with an annual population increase of 1.9%, resulting in a total resident population of 22,244,823.

“While Florida has often been among the largest-gaining states,” Wilder noted, “this was the first time since 1957 that Florida has been the state with the largest percent increase in population.”

It was also the second largest-gaining state behind Texas, with an increase of 416,754 residents. Net migration was the largest contributing component of change to Florida’s growth, adding 444,484 residents. New York had the largest annual numeric and percent population decline, decreasing by 180,341 (-0.9%). Net domestic migration (-299,557) was the largest contributing component to the state’s population decline.

Eighteen states experienced a population decline in 2022, compared to 15 and DC the prior year. California, with a population of 39,029,342, and Illinois, with a population of 12,582,032, also had six-figure decreases in resident population. Both states’ declining populations were largely due to net domestic outmigration, totaling 343,230 and 141,656, respectively.

Language Use in the US

 Sandy Dietrich and Erik Hernandez at the US Census Bureau:

The number of people in the United States who spoke a language other than English at home nearly tripled from 23.1 million (about 1 in 10) in 1980 to 67.8 million (almost 1 in 5) in 2019, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report.

At the same time, the number of people who spoke only English also increased, growing by approximately one-fourth from 187.2 million in 1980 to 241 million in 2019 (Figure 1).

The report, Language Use in the United States: 2019, uses American Community Survey (ACS) data to highlight trends and characteristics of the different languages spoken in the United States over the past four decades.

The Hispanic population is the largest minority group in the United States. So it is not surprising Spanish was the most common non-English language spoken in U.S. homes (62%) in 2019 – 12 times greater than the next four most common languages.

Citizenship and the Census

 Sam Levine at The Guardian:

Donald Trump’s administration tried to add a citizenship question to the decennial census as part of an effort to alter the way the US House’s 435 seats are divvied up among the 50 states, a new tranche of documents reveals.

The documents, released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday, offer the clearest evidence to date that the Trump administration’s public justification for adding the question was made up. For years, the administration said that it needed to add a citizenship question to the decennial survey because better citizenship data was needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The US supreme court ultimately blocked the Trump administration from adding the question in 2019, saying the rationale “seems to have been contrived”.

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Excluding non-citizens from the apportionment count, and therefore diminishing their political representation, has long been a goal of hard-right immigration groups. It would have clear political impact: California, Texas, and Florida all would have lost out on a congressional seat if unauthorized immigrants were excluded from apportionment, a 2020 projection by Pew found. Alabama, Minnesota, and Ohio all would have been able to hold on to an additional seat.

Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross became interested in adding a citizenship question shortly after taking office in 2017.

That year, James Uthmeier, a commerce department attorney, set out to analyze the legality of adding a citizenship question to the census at the request of Earl Comstock, a political appointee serving in a top policy role at the agency. In an undated memo released Wednesday, he concluded that doing so would not be lawful. The document makes it clear there is little evidence those who drafted the constitution wanted to exclude non-citizens from apportionment.

“Their conscious choice not to except aliens from the directive to count the population suggests the Founders did not intend to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens for the ‘actual Enumeration’ used for apportionment,” Uthmeier wrote in the draft memo.

“Over two hundred years of precedent, along with substantially convincing historical and textual arguments suggest that citizenship data likely cannot be used for purposes of apportioning representatives,” he added. “Without opining on the wisdom of such an action, a citizenship status question may legally be included on the decennial census so long as the collected information is not used for apportionment.”

But in subsequent drafts throughout 2017, Uthmeier and Comstock substantially changed that analysis.

They revised the memo to suggest there was much more ambiguity into whether a citizenship question could be added for apportionment purposes. By August 2017, they turned in a memo to Ross suggesting there was a legal basis for adding the question for apportionment purposes. “There are bases for legal arguments that the Founding Fathers intended for the apportionment count to be based on legal inhabitants,” the new memo said. “If the Secretary decides that the question is needed for apportionment purposes, then it must be included on the decennial.”

Undercount and Overcount

Many posts have discussed the census and population trends.

From the Census Bureau:

The U.S. Census Bureau today released the 2020 Census estimated undercount and overcount rates by state and the District of Columbia from the Post-Enumeration Survey (PES). Also released today are estimated coverage rates by census operation. This includes coverage rates by mode of self-response, and by respondent type in the Nonresponse Followup operation.

“The release of these PES estimates assists us in understanding how well we did this decade, state by state, in our efforts to count everyone living in the United States,” Census Bureau Director Robert L. Santos said. “Transparency is a critical aspect of scientific integrity. That is why we are releasing these results to the public. Our assessments – including the 2020 Census quality indicators, the PES, and the Demographic Analysis released earlier this year – offer valuable insights into the quality of the 2020 Census counts. Although none of the assessments alone can be considered definitive since no “true count” of the population exists, today’s PES results suggest that some states experienced undercounts or overcounts.”

The PES estimates show how well the 2020 Census counted everyone in the nation by creating an independent estimate of the number of people living in the United States on April 1, 2020 (excluding people in group quarters, such as nursing homes or college dorms, and people in Remote Alaska areas), surveying a sample of people in households in the United States and matching those responses to their records in the 2020 Census.

“Achieving an accurate count for all 50 states and DC is always a difficult endeavor, and these results suggest it was difficult again in 2020, particularly given the unprecedented challenges we faced,” Santos added. “It is important to remember that the quality of the 2020 Census total population count is robust and consistent with that of recent censuses. However, we know there is still more work to do in planning future censuses to ensure equitable coverage across the United States and we are working to overcome any and all obstacles to achieve that goal.”

This release includes:Undercount and overcount estimates for states, the District of Columbia (a state equivalent) and regions.
Components of coverage by state and the District of Columbia to estimate the proportions of census records that are correct, wrong, or we don’t have enough information to be sure one way or the other. They include correct enumerations, erroneous enumerations, whole-person imputations, and omissions.
National components of census coverage: Correct or erroneous enumerations and whole-person imputations by census operation and mode, including self-response by mode (internet, telephone, paper) and Nonresponse Followup by type of enumeration.

Key findings: 

• 37 states (or state equivalent) did not have estimated statistically significant undercounts or overcounts.
• 14 states (or state equivalent) are estimated to have had an undercount or overcount – a net coverage error statistically different from zero – meaning they were either undercounted or overcounted.Undercount: Arkansas (-5.04%), Florida (-3.48%), Illinois (-1.97%), Mississippi (-4.11%), Tennessee (-4.78%) and Texas (-1.92%).
• Overcount: Delaware (+5.45%), Hawaii (+6.79%), Massachusetts (+2.24%), Minnesota (+3.84%), New York (+3.44%), Ohio (+1.49%), Rhode Island (+5.05%) and Utah (+2.59%).

Visit the data visualization for a look at coverage for all states and the District of Columbia.

Hispanic Population" 62.1 Million

 From Pew:

The U.S. Hispanic population reached 62.1 million in 2020, an increase of 23% over the previous decade that outpaced the nation’s 7% overall population growth. At the county level, growth played out unevenly, which resulted in the continued geographic spread of Hispanics. Numerical growth of Hispanics was largest in counties that already had significant Hispanic populations, but the growth rate was largest in counties with smaller Hispanic populations, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of decennial census data from 1980 to 2020.

Decline in Foreign-Born Population?

Axios:

The population of foreign-born citizens and residents in the United States has plummeted for the first time in over a decade, according to the analysis of new and experimental U.S. Census Bureau data provided to Axios' Stef Kight.

Why it matters: While the decline coincides with the spread of COVID-19, a country with an aging population like that found in the United States needs strong levels of immigration to support economic growth. More immediately, immigrants could help fill the millions of job openings in the U.S.

1. The new data from the American Community Survey (ACS) also revealed the smallest decade gain in the foreign-born population since the 1960s, at 3.6 million. In comparison, the immigrant population grew by 8.8 million during the 2000s.
2. The data "strongly suggest a sizeable downturn in the U.S. foreign-born population, no doubt related to a downturn in immigration in the last year" due to coronavirus restrictions, Brookings Institution demographer William Frey told Axios.

Of note: The pandemic complicated census efforts in collecting data, and the 2020 ACS results did not meet the bureau's data standards for previous years.

• Both factors explain why they are labeled "experimental."
• Former President Trump's effort to exclude undocumented populations from reapportionment numbers, though ultimately failing, may have led some immigrant populations to be wary of responding to overall U.S. Census Bureau outreach.
• This may have at least partially contributed to the lower foreign-born population numbers, Frey said.

Enlarging the House

 Lee Drutman and Yuval Levin at WP:

Today’s vast districts put more distance between members and constituents in ways that tend to impose shallow, polarized, national frameworks on our society’s complex political topography. Members therefore tend to abstract away from their constituents — and those constituents know it.

In 2008, political scientist Brian Frederick found that — even given the relative uniformity of House districts — the smaller the district size, the more likely citizens were to have contact with their representatives and reach out to them for help, to think their representatives did a good job keeping in touch with the district, and to approve of their representative.

As former tea party Republican congressman Keith Rothfus put it recently, as “the number of people represented by a single member increases, each American’s voice in government grows smaller. Expanding the House would amplify those voices in our national government, thereby returning a greater measure of sovereignty to the people.”

More House members representing a finer-grained political diversity could also make meaningful intraparty factions more likely, and with them a greater possibility of legislative bargaining and accommodation across party lines.

Of course, any expansion would need to recognize that the House is intended to enable face-to-face bargaining, so it can only grow so large. How large? A group of scholars — including the two of us — convened by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently considered several options. In a new report, we recommend adding 150 seats, taking the House to 585 members. The chamber would then continue to grow with every decade’s census, following a formula roughly intended to ensure that no state loses seats, as was done throughout the 19th century.

That would immediately reduce the number of Americans represented by the average member by a quarter, yet the resulting House would still be a manageable size — smaller, for instance, than Britain’s 650-member House of Commons. Such an increase (that would modestly add new seats without taking away existing ones every decade) could plausibly appeal to the existing Congress, which would have to enact it.

Black Population Outflow from Big Cities

Shia Kappos and colleagues at Politico:

Chicago — and neighborhoods like Englewood — offer perhaps the most extreme example of a demographic upheaval reshaping power in cities across the country. The 2020 census shows Black Americans moving, in huge numbers, out of their longtime homes in Northern and Western cities, and resettling in smaller cities, the suburbs and — in a twist on the Great Migration of the 20th century — the South. Nine of 10 of the cities with the largest numbers of African Americans saw significant declines in their Black populations over the past 20 years, according to census data compiled by POLITICO.

In sheer numbers, Chicago’s outflow has been particularly dramatic. In 1980, about 40 percent of the city’s total population was Black — one of the country’s most formidable concentrations of Black business and political power. Since then, that number has dropped to just under 29 percent. Only Detroit, a city with its share of troubles, has seen a bigger drop in Black residents.

The Census and the States

Reid Wilson at The Hill:

In the last decade, the white share of the population dropped in all 50 states.

“The percentage of the country that is non-Hispanic white is decreasing and more and more jurisdictions, states, big cities are becoming majority people of color,” said Melissa Michelson, a political scientist at Menlo College who studies population trends. “People of color are gaining in power.”

Washington state saw its white population shrink by the largest margin of any state, down 8.7 percentage points over the last decade. Massachusetts, Nevada and Connecticut all saw declines of more than 8 percentage points as they become more diverse.

Six states are majority minority, meaning they have more minority residents than white residents: Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Texas were on that list 10 years ago. Now, Nevada and Maryland have joined them.

Even the whitest states in the nation got more diverse. In the last decade, four states — New Hampshire, West Virginia, Vermont and Maine — were more than 90 percent white. Now, only Maine is still above the 9-in-10 mark.

The only place it increased: Washington, D.C., where whites now trail Black Americans as a share of the population by just 2 percentage points.

Mila Jasper at The Sacramento Bee:

The findings of the U.S. Census Bureau, released Thursday, marked a historic moment: for the first time on record, the white population declined. California beat the national trend with a white population that declined by 1.2 million people, or 8.3%, according to 2020 census data.

Across California, white people declined as a share of the population from 40.1% to 34.7%. Latinos also became the largest ethnic group in California, making up 39.4% of the population statewide, according to the census data. 

 

Census: Less Rural, Less White

New census data!

Paul Overberg and John McCormick at WSJ:

The first detailed results of the 2020 census show a diversifying nation where the total white population shrank for the first time in its history and where large metropolitan areas, especially in the South and Southwest, saw the strongest growth.

The non-Hispanic white population dropped 2.6% between 2010 and 2020, a decline that puts that group’s share of the total U.S. population below 60%. The number of people who identify as more than one race or ethnicity grew at the fastest rate of any group, partly due to changes that captured more detailed responses.

The nation’s population grew just 7.4% during the decade, the second slowest on record for a decennial census. Only the 1930s—the era of the Great Depression—saw slower growth. Slightly more than half, or 51%, of the total U.S. population growth in the latest period came from increases among Hispanic or Latino residents, the Census Bureau said.

The new data show an overall aging of the nation’s population. Those under age 18 totaled 73.1 million, or 22.1% of the U.S. population in 2020, a 1.4% decrease from 74.2 million in 2010. The decline was partly due to lower fertility rates in recent years, the Census Bureau said.

As many cities and suburbs expanded, the bureau said, the trend toward rural depopulation continued during the decade. More than half of U.S. counties—52%—had smaller populations in 2020 than in 2010.

“Population growth was almost entirely in metropolitan areas,” said Marc Perry, a senior demographer for the Census Bureau.

The cores of metro areas with more than a million people grew 9.1%, while their suburbs grew 10.3%, a Wall Street Journal analysis of the new data shows. Smaller metro areas grew 7.1%. By contrast, small towns and rural areas saw their combined populations drop 0.6%.

Mike Schneider at AP:

The data also showed that the share of the white population fell from 63.7% in 2010 to 57.8% in 2020, the lowest on record, though white people continue to be the most prevalent racial or ethnic group. In California, Hispanics became the largest racial or ethnic group, growing from 37.6% to 39.4%, while the share of white people dropped from 40.1% to 34.7%.

Some demographers cautioned that the white population was not shrinking as much as shifting to multiracial identities. The number of people who identified as belonging to two or more races more than tripled from 9 million people in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020. They now account for 10% of the U.S. population.

White Shrinkage

 At Brookings, William Frey writes that the previous decade could go down as the first to see an absolute loss in white population.

These new estimates show annual population changes by race and ethnicity between July 2010 and July 2020. They indicate that, for each year since 2016, the nation’s white population dropped in size. Thus, all of U.S. population growth from 2016 to 2020 comes from gains in people of color.

These statistics extend and update a trend revealed in data published last year, and further emphasize why the diversity profile of the U.S. population is rising rapidly. This is especially the case for the nation’s younger population, which experienced the greatest white population losses. The statistics also imply that, as the white population ages and declines further, racial and ethnic diversity will be the hallmark demographic feature of America’s younger generations, including Gen Z and those that follow.

Earlier population estimates have shown that the 2010s decade—especially its later years—was one of historically low population growth. This was the result of declining fertility, increased mortality, and a slowdown in immigration from abroad. The former two trends are especially characteristic of the nation’s white population, who are aging more rapidly than other groups.[2]

As Figure 1 shows, annual white population losses over the four years between 2016-17 and 2019-20 were 129,000; 252,000; 290,000; and 482,000. Together, this loss of more than 1 million white people outweighs the white population gains of the decade’s six earlier years, leading to a likely first-ever decade decline of the nation’s white population when the final 2020 census results are tallied (Download Table A). 

Counting Students and Prisoners

 Paul Mitchell at The Redistricting Report notes that the Census Bureau needed to count college students just as the pandemic emptied campuses.

It appeared to be a problem, but the Census Bureau assured college students they’d be all counted together at their respective campuses through a process called Group Quarters whereby the bureau receives manual tallies of the populations of college dormitories, nursing homes, and prisons based on the records kept for those facilities instead of direct interviews with the census enumerators or self-responses. You can really geek out on how this process is performed by reading the Census Bureau’s blogpost about it.

And for many this was confusing. What if a student was living off campus, not in the dorms? Would they be counted in the group-quarters or would they have to report themselves as living in their off-campus apartment? What if their parents already put them on their census form – would they be in trouble if they got double-counted? This was something that colleges were email blasting students about as they wanted them to report as living in their college community.

The census has a process for de-duplicating in a case where someone is accidentally, or purposefully reported being in two places at once. They also have processes for imputing populations where there was no reporting at all – which could have been significant in a once-bustling college town that turned into a ghost town overnight.

And that’s where the Republican lawsuit comes in. The GOP harbors some doubt about how those headcounts were arrived at and they’re suing to find out exactly how the Census arrived at the numbers of students who will be counted at college campuses, which often carry significant heft in the drawing of electoral districts.

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Similarly, in the increasing number of states like California that are confronting the “prison gerrymander,” Group Quarters plays a part as well. These states are planning to count prison inmates in the communities they resided in at the time of arrest instead of where they were incarcerated on April 1. For California, that’s an estimated 116,000 people statewide that would be removed from the headcounts in the largely rural communities in the Central Valley and desert communities, depleting them of that redistricting currency in the upcoming redraw. A higher prison imputation by the Census Bureau in Kings County’s prison facilities, for example, means that county will have that many more individuals removed from their population base in the maps drawn for Congress, Assembly, and Senate.

Apportionment and Population

From the Census Bureau:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that the 2020 Census shows the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2020, was 331,449,281.

The U.S. resident population represents the total number of people living in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The resident population increased by 22,703,743 or 7.4% from 308,745,538 in 2010.
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The new resident population statistics for the United States, each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are available on census.gov.

• The most populous state was California (39,538,223); the least populous was Wyoming (576,851).
• The state that gained the most numerically since the 2010 Census was Texas (up 3,999,944 to 29,145,505).
• The fastest-growing state since the 2010 Census was Utah (up 18.4% to 3,271,616).
• Puerto Rico's resident population was 3,285,874, down 11.8% from 3,725,789 in the 2010 Census.

In addition to these newly released statistics, today Secretary Raimondo delivered to President Biden the population counts to be used for apportioning the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In accordance with Title 2 of the U.S. Code, a congressionally defined formula is applied to the apportionment population to distribute the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among the states.

The apportionment population consists of the resident population of the 50 states, plus the overseas military and federal civilian employees and their dependents living with them overseas who could be allocated to a home state. The populations of the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are excluded from the apportionment population because they do not have voting seats in Congress. The counts of overseas federal employees (and their dependents) are used for apportionment purposes only.

After the 1790 Census, each member of the House represented about 34,000 residents. Since then, the House has more than quadrupled in size (from 105 to 435 seats), and each member will represent an average of 761,169 people based on the 2020 Census.

Texas will gain two seats in the House of Representatives, five states will gain one seat each (Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon), seven states will lose one seat each (California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia), and the remaining states’ number of seats will not change based on the 2020 Census.

Upon receipt of the apportionment counts, the president will transmit them to the 117th Congress. The reapportioned Congress will be the 118th, which convenes in January 2023.

“Our work doesn’t stop here,” added acting Director Jarmin. “Now that the apportionment counts are delivered, we will begin the additional activities needed to create and deliver the redistricting data that were previously delayed due to COVID-19.”

Redistricting data include the local area counts states need to redraw or “redistrict” legislative boundaries. Due to modifications to processing activities, COVID-19 data collections delays, and the Census Bureau’s obligation to provide high-quality data, states are expected to receive redistricting data by August 16, and the full redistricting data with toolkits for ease of use will be delivered by September 30. The Census Bureau will notify the public prior to releasing the data.

Growth of Asian American Population

Abby Budiman and Neil G. Ruiz at Pew:

Asian Americans recorded the fastest population growth rate among all racial and ethnic groups in the United States between 2000 and 2019. The Asian population in the U.S. grew 81% during that span, from roughly 10.5 million to a record 18.9 million, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, the last before 2020 census figures are released. Furthermore, by 2060, the number of U.S. Asians is projected to rise to 35.8 million, more than triple their 2000 population.

Hispanics saw the second-fastest population growth between 2000 and 2019, followed by Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPI) at 70% and 61%, respectively. The nation’s Black population also grew during this period, albeit at a slower rate of 20%. There was virtually no change in the White population.

 

Historical Apportionment Map

The U.S. Census Bureau reported last week on a new online map today ahead of the 2020 Census apportionment results release. 

The “Historical Apportionment Data Map” currently displays apportionment results for each census from 1910 to 2010. 2020 Census apportionment results will be added to the map as they become available.

Apportionment is the process of dividing the 435 memberships, or seats, in the U.S. House of Representatives among the 50 states based on the apportionment population counts from the decennial census. Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires that a census of the population be taken every 10 years to apportion seats in Congress.

The interactive map includes the following types of data for each census from 1910 to 2010:

• Number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
• Changes to each state’s number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
• Population per representative for each state.
• Resident population of each state.
• Percentage change in resident population for each state.
• Population density of each state.

The interactive map also features:

• Downloadable tables showing the source data.
• Technical documentation.
• Optimization for mobile use.

The apportionment population count includes the resident population of the 50 states, plus the overseas federal employees (military and civilian) and their dependents living with them who could be allocated to their home states. The population of the District of Columbia is not included in the apportionment population because it does not have any voting seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Lowest US Population Growth in a Century

William Frey at Brookings:

Figure 1 depicts annual U.S. population growth rates from 1900-01 to 2019-20. The most recent growth rate of 0.35% is the lowest of any single year since the beginning of the twentieth century, and likely for most of the nation’s history.

Over this period, the nation’s growth experienced ups and downs during wars, economic upheavals, and immigration waves. This includes a dip to below 0.5% during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and rises to almost 2% during the post-World War II “baby boom.” After sagging to annual levels closer to 1% during the 1970s and 1980s, there was uptick in the 1990s as a consequence of higher immigration.

Since 2000, national population growth started to dip again, especially after the Great Recession, and in recent years due to new immigration restrictions. Yet the 2019-to-2020 rate is well below most growth rates over the past 102 years, and less than half the level observed as recently as 2000 (see downloadable Table A).

Part of last year’s sharp decline can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought with it more deaths and further restrictions in immigration. Among states, 16 lost population in 2019-20 including California for the first time, and 34 showed lower growth or greater declines than in the previous year (downloadable Table B).

Living Arrangements

From the Census:

Newly released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual America’s Families and Living Arrangements release show that the number of parents with children under age 18 and living at home declined by about 3 million over the past decade, dropping from about 66.1 million parents in 2010 to 63.1 million in 2020.

The living arrangements of parents changed less over the past 10 years. In 2020, 78% of parents living with children were married, compared to 77% in 2010. Adults living with an unmarried, cohabiting partner made up 7% of parents with coresident children under 18 in both 2010 and 2020. Finally, parents living without a partner accounted for 16% of parents in 2010 and 15% of parents in 2020.

Living arrangements differ between fathers and mothers. In 2020, 70% of mothers and 87% of fathers living with children under 18 were married. It was more common for mothers, however, to live without a partner — 23% of mothers and only 6% of fathers were living without a partner.

Other highlights:

Households

• There are 36.2 million one-person households, which is 28% of all households. In 1960, single-person households represented only 13% of all households.

Family

• The number of families with their own children under 18 in the household declined from 2000 to 2020. In 2020, 40% of all families lived with their own children under 18, compared to 44% in 2010 and 48% in 2000.

Marriage

• In 2020, 33% of adults ages 15 and over had never been married, up from 23% in 1950.
• The estimated median age to marry for the first time is 30.5 for men and 28.1 for women, up from ages 23.7 and 20.5, respectively, in 1947.
• One-quarter (25%) of children under age 15 living in married-couple families had a stay-at-home mother, compared to only 1% with a stay-at-home father.

Living Arrangements

More than half (58%) of adults ages 18 to 24 lived in their parental home, up from 55% in 2019. The increase was seen for both men (56% in 2019 to 60% in 2020) and women (53% in 2019 and 56% in 2020). Estimates for men have not been that high since 2016, and for women, this is the highest percentage living in their parents’ home since these data were first collected in 1960. It is important to note that the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted this year’s estimate. Colleges and universities sent students home in the spring of 2020 when Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) data were collected. However, college students who live in on-campus student housing are counted as living in their parents’ home in CPS, regardless of the year.

These statistics come from the 2020 CPS ASEC, which has collected statistics on families for more than 60 years. The data show characteristics of households, living arrangements, married/unmarried couples, and children.

For more data on families and living arrangements, visit Families and Living Arrangements at census.gov.

Racial and Ethnic Categories

  Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg at WSJ:

The government, which plays a dominant role in setting racial and ethnic categories, hasn’t developed the tools to keep pace with a shifting population, demographers say. Four decades ago, for example, the U.S. Census added an ethnic “Hispanic” category to its authoritative survey of America’s demographic contours. Today, Hispanics include a vast population of both new immigrants and multi-generation American families with varying depths of ties to Latin America. New research suggests that many Hispanics are assimilating in ways that echo how Italian, Polish, and other European immigrants a century ago were eventually absorbed into the American mainstream. As they do, they are diverging economically, socially and politically.

...

Sociologists say that projections for a white minority rely on outdated concepts of race. The federal government generally counts anyone with nonwhite lineage as a minority, a practice that echoes the “one drop” rule that once allowed discrimination against people with even minimal Black ancestry. The Census Bureau currently projects that the share of people defined as white by this restrictive definition will drop below half of the population by 2045. But by using a broader definition—including as “white” anyone with a white parent and a parent of another race—whites would be about 55% of the population and would remain a majority even in 2055.

The government’s majority-minority projections use almost exclusively the “one drop” way of counting. For example, 42 million people checked “Black” on the Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey and an additional 4.7 million marked “Black” and another race. But historically, the bureau hasn’t distinguished between these two ways of self-identifying as Black. Moreover, roughly 60% of mixed-race babies have one parent conventionally considered white, and another who is Hispanic, Asian or mixed race (typically white and minority). They are more likely to live alongside whites and, once they grow up, to marry whites than their single-race minority counterparts, research shows.

“The majority-minority story that we’ve all imbibed, that is very widely believed, is a distortion,” said sociologist Richard Alba. In his new book, “The Great Demographic Illusion,” the City University of New York professor argues that the projection assumes a rigidity to racial and ethnic boundaries that does not reflect surging intermarriage or America’s experience with immigration.