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Quite frequently, North Carolina’s trends mirror national averages. Nationwide, 53% of U.S. counties lost population between 2010 and 2014. In North Carolina, 49% did. North Carolina differs slightly from the nation, however, in the county distribution of the underlying demographic processes driving population growth—or decline. In North Carolina counties it was more common for both demographic processes to move in tandem than it was nationwide. One-third of NC counties had population growth from both natural…
Two fundamental processes underpin population growth—or decline. The first, natural increase (or natural decrease) captures the balance of births and deaths in an area and reflects the underlying age structure of the population. Relatively young populations tend to have more births than deaths, or natural increase. Relatively older populations, on the other hand, tend to experience natural decrease, more deaths than births. The second, net migration, reflects the appeal of an area relative to other…
Nationwide, the majority of counties have lost population since 2010, according to recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. State by state, the share of counties that have lost population varies substantially (as does the number of counties per state!). In 27 states, half or more of the counties lost population between 2010 and 2014. The highest proportion of loss—80%--was seen in Illinois and Rhode Island. North Carolina was one of the 23 states where…
Recently, I’ve had some fun mapping the 13 counties that contain half of the state’s population, as well as the 42 least populated counties with 10% of North Carolina’s total population. In Monday’s post, I mentioned that there are significant racial/ethnic differences in the likelihood of living in a municipality. In particular, Asian residents are highly clustered in the state’s largest urban areas. To put this clustering in perspective, it takes 16 counties with the…
In 1910, North Carolina had a population of 2.2 million. Only two cities, Charlotte (34,014) and Wilmington (25,748), had populations surpassing 25,000 persons. Winston-Salem (22,700) was the third largest city in the state followed by Raleigh (19,218), Asheville (18,762), Durham (18,241), and Greensboro (15,895). None of North Carolina’s cities numbered among the 100 largest cities in the United States. Reflecting this highly rural, low density population, less than 3% of the state’s population lived in…
While Catholicism and non-denominational churches are gaining adherents within the state, 2010 county patterns of religious affiliation reflect significant stability in North Carolina’s religious landscape. These maps of religious affiliation by county, measured as the denomination with the largest number of adherents according to the United States Census of Religious Bodies for 1916, 1926, and 1936, highlight this stability. As in 2010, Southern Baptist is the largest denominational affiliation statewide, United Methodist has a strong…
According to the most recent U.S. Religion Census, conducted in 2010, about half of the U.S. population (49% or nearly 151 million persons) are adherents to some religion. Nationwide, the largest denominational affiliation is Catholicism, with an estimated 59 million adherents. While Protestantism as a group has more than 77 million adherents, it is comprised of dozens of individual denominations. Among these, the Southern Baptist Convention is the second largest religious group in the United…
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