Minnesota: 'More diverse from the bottom up'

By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
Posted 21m ago

Minnesota, long known as the home of Norwegian farmers and German brewers, is becoming more diverse.

About 17% of its residents are minorities, up from about 12% a decade ago, 2010 Census data released Wednesday show.

"We're still a lot less diverse than the nation as a whole," says state demographer Tom Gillaspy, "but we are changing."

The state gained 384,446 residents since 2000 and now has a population of 5.3 million.

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More than 80% of the state's population growth since 2000 is attributable to minorities, Gillaspy says. The Hispanic population grew almost 75%, to 250,258, and now comprises almost 5% of Minnesotans.

Also increasing: the black population, up 59% to 269,141, and Asians, up 51% to 212,996.

Gillaspy says growth in Minnesota's black population is fueled in part by an influx of immigrants from Africa. Asian newcomers are increasingly from China and India, he says.

William Frey, a demographer at Washington's Brookings Institution, says more than a quarter of the state's children are minorities. Twenty years ago, one in 10 children were minorities, he says.

Minnesota, Frey says, "is becoming more diverse from the bottom up."

Population fell in 37 of the state's 87 counties, most of them along the Canadian border, in the south adjacent to Iowa and in the western part of the state. Swift County, in west-central Minnesota, lost 18% of its population and now has 9,783 residents.

However, the five suburban counties around Minneapolis and St. Paul — Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Scott and Washington — grew an average of 23% since 2000. Scott County was the state's fastest-growing, at 45%.

Those counties have been "explicitly wanting, planning for and encouraging growth," says Libby Starling, research manager for the Metropolitan Council, a seven-county planning organization.

She credits the state's relative economic stability during the recession for attracting new people to the metro area. Minnesota's jobless rate was 6.7% in January, the latest report. The national rate in February was 8.9%.

Starling was surprised to see small population drops in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Those losses, she says, reflect the appeal of the state's biggest cities to "empty-nesters and young professionals who don't have children."

Outside the Twin Cities, Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic, grew 24% to 106,769 and St. Cloud grew 11% to 65,842.

Woodbury grew 33% to 61,961. "This exceeded even our estimates," says Woodbury Mayor Mary Giuliani Stephens. "It's all about our strategic location" near major freeways, downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

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