8 US states lost population in 2016

These eight US states have shrunk in 2016

U.S. population growth is at an 80 year low.

Shannon Roberts | Jan 16 2017 | https://www.mercatornet.com/images/comment.png

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New York, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Connecticut, Vermont, Illinois, and West Virginia all experienced shrinking populations in 2015-2016 according to figures recently released by the United States Census Bureau. This was in part due to internal migration by people seeking new employment opportunities, warmer weather or retirement in other states.

Despite some states benefitting from migration and higher birth rates (Utah was the fastest growing state with a 2 percent gain), the overall growth rate of the United States population reached its lowest point since the Depression era. The annual growth rate of below 0.7 per cent was the lowest since 1936-37, despite immigration levels of around one million annually propping up 45 percent of that growth.

Demographers have historically considered that it is the economy that is putting couples off having children and that the birth rate should recover when the economy recovers. But birth rates have remained stubbornly low despite some economic pick-up in recent years, suggesting that more than just money is at play.

Factors such as infertility caused by the unprecedented delay in having one’s first child and the pressure on mothers to manage both motherhood and sustain a career are also having an impact on sustained low birth rates in much of the Western world.

Moreover, many mothers in the U.S. receive little support to bring up their children themselves, little parenting assistance compared to other countries around the world, and are often unhappy with daycare available to them. Sixty percent of Americans say children are better off when a parent stays home to focus on the family according to research by the Pew Research Center. For those mothers that work outside the home, the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 requires US employers to provide only unpaid time off for childbirth. While some employers do offer paid parental leave, only 12% of American workers are covered by those policies.

The overall U.S. population growth rate isn’t expected to recover anytime soon. According to US census projections it will drop to 0.5 percent by 2040 due to the aging population, a lower birth rate and decreased immigration.

https://www.mercatornet.com/Demograp...-in-2016/19197

Pennsylvania's population drops for first time in 31 years

• Dec 21, 2016

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• Tom Mihalek

The skyline of downtown Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Tom Mihalek)

Utah’s population crossed the 3 million mark as it became the nation’s fastest-growing state over the last year while Pennsylvania's population declined for the first time in three decades, according to U.S. Census Bureau national and state population estimates released this week.

Utah's population increased 2 percent to 3.1 million from July 1, 2015, to July 1, 2016.

Pennsylvania, which still ranks sixth nationally, with 12,784,227, down from 12,791,904 last July, the first drop over one year since 1985. Pennsylvania's population has increased since the last census in 2010, when the commonwealth's population was 12,702,857.

Top most populous states

Rank	State	2010	2015	2016
1	California	37,254,522	38,993,940	39,250,017
2	Texas	24,146100	27,429,639	27,862,596
3	Florida	18,804,592	20,204,914	20,612,439
4	New York	19,378,110	19,747,182	19,745,289
5	Illinois	12,831,574	12,839,047	12,801,539
6	Pennsylvania	12,702,857	12,791,904	12,784,227
7	Ohio	11,536,727	11,605,090	11,614,373
8	Georgia	9,688,680	10,119,398	10,310,371
9	North Carolina	9,535,688	10,035,186	10,146,788
10	Michigan	9,844,129	9,917,715	9,928,300

“States in the South and West continued to lead in population growth,” said Ben Bolender, Chief of the Population Estimates Branch. “In 2016, 37.9 percent of the nation’s population lived in the South and 23.7 percent lived in the West.”

Following Utah, Nevada (2.0 percent), Idaho (1.8 percent), Florida (1.8 percent) and Washington (1.8 percent) saw the largest percentage increases in population.

North Dakota, which had been the fastest-growing state for the previous four years, mostly from people moving into the state.

Nationally, the U.S. population grew by 0.7 percent to 323.1 million. Furthermore, the population of voting-age residents, adults age 18 and over, grew to 249.5 million, making up 77.2 percent of the population in 2016, an increase of 0.9 percent from 2015 (247.3 million).

Eight states lost population between July 1, 2015, and July 1, 2016, including Pennsylvania, New York and Wyoming, all three of which had grown the previous year. Illinois lost more people than any other state (-37,508).

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Wyoming population drops, economy flat

• Dec 28, 2016
• 2

(AP) – The downturn in Wyoming’s extraction industry caused the state to see its first population decline since 1990.

But state economists say there are signs that Wyoming’s economy has at least stabilized.


The U.S. Census Bureau this week estimated that Wyoming’s population declined by just over 1,000, or 0.2 percent, from July 2015 to July 2016.

State economist Wenlin Liu (LEW) says the population decline reflects the downturn in Wyoming’s mineral extraction industry that has cost thousands of jobs over about the last year.


But state economist Jim Robinson says job losses in the oil and gas industry appear to have flattened out and there has been a slight increase in drilling activity in recent months.

Robinson says the state economy looks fairly stable now although there isn’t much growth.

• http://www.codyenterprise.com/news/l...84d8c52f4.html

Woolf: More people are leaving Vermont

Art Woolf, Free Press contributor
Published 6:37 a.m. ET Dec. 29, 2016 | Updated 9:32 a.m. ET Dec. 29, 2016

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People choosing to leave is a major reason for the Vermont's population stagnation and there’s no indication that will change, says Art Woolf. Wochit

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(Photo: FREE PRESS FILE)


How many Vermonters will be ringing in the new year in a few days? We don’t know exactly, but the Census Bureau tells us that 624,594 people lived in Vermont on July 1, 2016. That’s down 1,500 from one year earlier and it’s the third year in a row that Vermont’s population has declined. Our 2016 population is also below the Census’s 2010 count. Only seven other states lost population in 2016 and only three others — Connecticut, West Virginia, and Illinois — have fewer people today than in 2010. Vermont belongs to a very elite club — one that we shouldn’t want to join.

In contrast to Vermont’s population decline, the U.S. population grew by 0.7 percent in 2016 and has grown by just under 1 percent per year since 2000. Vermont’s growth rate of 0.3 percent per year over the past 16 years is one-third of the U.S. average.

Why is Vermont’s population stagnating? It’s pretty simple to break down the total population change into its basic parts: the difference between the number of births and deaths, immigrants moving into Vermont from other nations, and the gap between people moving into Vermont from other states and those moving out.

Between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016 about 6,000 babies were born to Vermont mothers and about 5,500 Vermonters died, yielding what demographers call the natural population increase of 500 people. That number, shown in the blue line, has been falling for the past eight years as the number of babies born has been slowly decreasing and the number of Vermonters dying slowly increasing. As Vermont’s population ages, the number of deaths will begin to increase and births will either remain constant or fall so the blue line will inch closer to zero. In Vermont’s four southern counties, it’s already below zero.

Vermont’s immigrant population has also been a positive factor contributing to Vermont’s population change. The red line shows that for most of the early 2000s about 500 immigrants moved into Vermont each year. For the last two years, it’s been closer to 1,000 per year. According to the Pew Research Center, about one-third of these immigrants are refugees. Even though that’s a small number, refugees do play a role in Vermont’s population change. Pew finds that Vermont has the fourth highest numbers of refugees as a percent of its population of any state in the nation. Without immigrants, and without refugees, Vermont’s population decline would be even larger.

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Between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016 about 6,000 babies were born to Vermont mothers and about 5,500 Vermonters died, yielding what demographers call the natural population increase of 500 people. That number has been falling for the past eight years as the number of babies born has been slowly decreasing and the number of Vermonters dying slowly increasing. (Photo: Darren Baker/Gannett file)


Finally, and most important, is the net migration of people to and from other states. In the early 2000s, slightly more people moved to Vermont each year than left. But for more than a decade, more people have been leaving than coming.

Last year nearly 3,000 more people left Vermont for other states than moved here. Even though we had more births than deaths, and immigration was positive, our population outflow is the reason for Vermont’s population stagnation and there’s no indication that will change. Indeed, as the graph shows, the rate at which people are leaving the state is increasing.

Vermont comes out high in many state ranking lists. But the ultimate ranking is not how people answer surveys or how experts configure their rankings. It’s in people’s choices of where to live. When more people leave a state than move in, means Vermont has a lot of undesirable qualities that overwhelm its assets. To be sure, other states are in a similar situation. Thirty-one states had net out-migration of population in 2016, including New York, California, and every New England state except for Maine and New Hampshire.

How long will Vermont’s population continue with this slow growth or stagnation? It has happened in the past. Between 1830 and 1960 Vermont’s population was virtually unchanged, increasing by only 0.3 percent per year, the same rate at which it has grown this century. The U.S. rate was more than six times faster. That change compounds into some significant results. Vermont’s population rose by 40 percent over that period. The U.S. population increased nearly fifteen-fold. For most of the 19th and first half of the twentieth century one of our biggest exports was people.

That’s happening again. Will it remain true for the next 130 years? Check back on New Year’s Day of 2146 for the answer.

Population change in Vermont 2001-2016

Vermont population since 2000

Correction: Vermont is one of four states that have fewer people today than in 2010. This was incorrect in an earlier version of the story.
This column first posted online Dec. 29, 2016.
Art Woolf is associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/s...oolf/95886408/

Reduced population is a good thing. Wealth and prosperity will come with Trump based on production not population growth, which is a far better measure of prosperity than more mouths to feed. Americans have known that for decades since the 60's.

West Virginia Population Decline Continues

Roughly 10,000 people left the mountain state

TOP HEADLINES DEC 21, 2016
IAN HICKS CITY EDITOR

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Photo by Scott McCloskey A man walks through Wheeling’s Centre Market area. New U.S. Census Bureau estimates show West Virginia lost almost 10,000 residents over the last year.

WHEELING — West Virginia lost more population over the last year than all but one state, U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Tuesday show.

The Mountain State had an estimated 1,831,102 residents on July 1, according to the Census Bureau — almost 10,000 fewer than on July 1, 2015. That makes West Virginia one of only eight states to lose population over the last year.

Ohio, a state of about 11.6 million, experienced a modest population gain of almost 9,300 residents, according to the new estimates.

Only Illinois lost more residents than West Virginia, according to the estimates, at about 37,500.

However, expressed as a percentage of the state’s overall population, West Virginia’s loss was greater, at 0.5 percent to Illinois’ 0.3 percent. Illinois has about 12.8 million residents.

West Virginia has lost population each year since 2013, and has about 22,000 fewer residents than it did at the last official count in 2010.

“Quite frankly, it’s sad,” said state Sen.-elect Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, who will move to the Legislature’s upper chamber after serving a term in the House of Delegates. “I think there’s no one thing that we’re going to do that’s going to completely change the tide. That’s not how things work.”

Weld believes the state must improve the regulatory environment for businesses and bring the state’s policies “more in line with competitive states.” But he said there’s another important component to attracting job creators to the Mountain State.

“For me, it all goes back to our substance abuse problem,” Weld said. “If a business is looking to expand here but knows that a large portion of applicants are going to disqualify themselves (because they can’t pass a drug test), it makes it difficult for them.”

Regarding the state’s population loss, Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott said his creation of a special committee on population retention wasn’t an accident, and that from the beginning of his campaign for mayor he’s maintained the belief local government should ensure a high quality of life for residents.

Elliott said items such as parks, housing and culture are what people seek in a possible home, and added they are items young people consider when they move to other cities.

So far, Elliott and fellow council members have hired a director of parks and strategic planning to address some of this, although the role beyond parks has been loosely defined. In general, Elliott said increasing the local population is a high priority for the city.

Elliott said it’s possible much of the estimated population decline may be attributed to deaths outpacing births rather than people relocating, but noted he couldn’t speak to the reason with confidence without additional data.

One thing that gives Weld hope, he said, is the ever-increasing number of lawmakers 40 or younger — himself included — in the Legislature. While he said the trend is more noticeable in the House of Delegates than the Senate, Weld hopes the shift will send a message to those who have moved away that West Virginia is ready for fresh ideas and new ways of doing things.

“Maybe the change in the demographics of the Legislature may forebode a change in the demographics of the state, potentially,” he said.

Overall, the United States’ population grew by about 2.2 million over the last year, from 320.9 million to 323.1 million. The nation experiences a net gain of one person every 13 seconds, according to the Census Bureau.

Utah is the fastest-growing state, adding 2.03 percent to its population over the last year and supplanting North Dakota, which experienced the largest estimated growth the previous four years.

Texas experienced the largest numeric growth, at almost 433,000 residents.

“States in the South and West continued to lead in population growth,” said Ben Bolender, chief of the Census Bureau’s population estimates branch, in a news release. “In 2016, 37.9 percent of the nation’s population lived in the South and 23.7 percent lived in the West.”

Other than West Virginia and Illinois, the states where estimates declined were Connecticut, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wyoming.

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Illinois loses more residents in 2016 than any other state