U.S. 2000 census finds record growth

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The 2000 census found 32.7 million more people in the United States than the 1990 count, a record increase. Over the 10-year period, the U.S. population grew to 281.4 million.

The previous record increase for a decade was 28 million during the "baby boom" of the 1950s.

Regional growth followed a familiar pattern.

The census found "faster growth in the West and the South, which were up by 20 percent and 17 percent," said Census Bureau demographer Marc Perry. He reported "slower growth in the Midwest and the Northeast, which were up only 8 and 5 percent respectively."

But population growth was more widely distributed across the country than in the past. For the first time in a century, every state recorded growth, the Census Bureau said, and about 80 percent of counties gained population during the decade, compared with about 55 percent during the 1980s.

Still, growth at the state level varied widely.

"Growth during the 1990s ranged from just under 1 percent in North Dakota to a whopping 66 percent in Nevada," Perry said.

Nevada grew five times faster than the country as a whole and has been the fastest-growing state for four straight decades.

Americans continue to be attracted to large metropolitan areas.

"Most Americans live in a metropolitan area," said Census Bureau geographer Paul Mackun. "In 2000, metro areas contained slightly over 80 percent of the U.S. population."

More than half of the country's population lives in metro areas with a population of at least 1 million, and 30 percent of Americans live in one of the nine metropolitan areas with a population of at least 5 million people, the Census Bureau found.

New York remains the most populous metropolitan area with 21.2 million people, or about one out of every 13 Americans. Las Vegas was the fastest-growing metro area in the 1990s with an 83.3 percent growth rate.

With the new numbers, the United States has a new population center -- determined by where a U.S. map would balance if population distribution were charted on it. The center has moved to Phelps County in south-central Missouri, about 34 miles west-southwest of the 1990 population hub of Crawford, Missouri, the Census Bureau said.

The U.S. population center has shifted more than a thousand miles westward since the 1790 census, when it was in Chesterton, Maryland.

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U.S. Census Bureau
  • Census 2000
  • State and County QuickFacts
Census Monitoring Board

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