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North Carolina added an average of 281 people per day between 2014 and 2015, pushing its total population above 10 million in the U.S. Census Bureau’s recently released state population estimates. North Carolina is the ninth state to pass the 10 million mark. Since the 2010 Census, North Carolina’s population has grown by over half a million new residents (507,110), more than any state except for Texas (2.3M), California (1.9M), Florida (1.5M), and Georgia (526K).…
Only 83 of the nation’s 3,142 counties had a population of 750,000 or more in 2014. Two of these counties—Mecklenburg (Charlotte) and Wake (Raleigh)—were in North Carolina. Among these larger counties, population growth between the 2010 Census and the July 1, 2014 population estimates ranged from a loss of nearly 56,000 residents in Wayne County, MI (home to Detroit) to a gain of more than 348,000 new residents in Harris County, TX (Houston). With a…
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…
North Carolina’s population has grown by more than 408,000 new residents since the 2010 Census. Of these, 95,000 were added between July 1, 2013 and July 1, 2014. New county population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau highlight how counties and metropolitan areas changed over this same time period. In many ways, the 2014 estimates are a continuation of the population trends we saw in the 2013 estimates: metropolitan regions are driving the state’s overall…
Monday, September 15th, through Wednesday, October 15th, marks National Hispanic Heritage Month. In 1990, 76,726 North Carolina residents identified as Hispanic, 1.2% of the state’s population. Twenty-two years later, the state’s Hispanic population had increased eleven-fold. According to the American Community Survey, there were 845,420 Hispanic individuals living in North Carolina in 2012, representing 8.7% of the state’s population. Both components of population growth—net migration and natural increase, or more births than deaths—drove the rapid…
Between 2011 and 2012, North Carolina gained nearly 35,000 net migrants. The total flows into and out of the state were nearly 8 times as large: nearly 240,000 residents moved out while another 275,000 moved in. Net migration is the total number of movers into an area minus the total number of movers out of an area. Net in-migration means more people are moving in than are moving out, while net out-migration means more people…
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