U.S. growth rate hits new low as migration to the Sun Belt continues

Annual Census Bureau data, tracking national and state population totals, brought both good and bad news this year. First the bad news: The nation has just registered a new low point in population growth since the Depression era. However, on a more positive note, population growth is returning to Sun Belt states as their economies revive post-recession.

Declining national population growth

The nation’s annual growth rate sunk below 0.7 percent in 2015-16, making it the lowest rate of growth since the 1936-37 measurement . For the bulk of the period spanning World War II through the early 1980s national growth exceeded 0.95 percent. And high growth rates during prime baby boom years exceeded 1.5 percent, topping out at 2.1 percent between 1949-50.

A modest slowdown occurred during the 1980s, though rates still hovered around 0.9 percent, then rose to over 1 percent in the 1990s consistent with the birth of the millennial generation and rises in immigration. The early 2000s showed a slight diminution in those rates but growth remained above 0.9 percent.

After 2008, rates dipped below 0.8 percent for six years and fell to the recent sub 0.7 percent low in 2015-16. Some of the initial decline over these years is attributable to reduced immigration. But as immigration levels have increased in the past three years, now hovering around one million annually, low “natural increase” – the excess of births over deaths – has played a bigger role as the birth rate has declined and the death rate has risen.

It is likely that some of the reduced fertility in recent years is attributable to recession-related delays in family formation among young adult millennials; this trend could reverse in the near future as the economy continues to grow. But higher death rates are likely to continue due to the long-term aging of the population, a phenomenon contributing to projected declines in U.S. growth rates, which could drop as low as 0.5 percent in 2040 .

Still immigration, both past and present, has contributed to the nation’s population growth at a time when several other industrialized counties, such as Japan, Germany, and Italy are facing the specter of long-term population decline . By comparison, the United States can look forward to continued population growth, albeit at lower levels, for decades to come.

Continued shifts to the Sun Belt

Despite the lower national growth rate, the new statistics herald good news for several Sun Belts states where recent population shifts are reversing slow growth during the Great Recession and immediate post-recession years. Seven of the eight fastest growing states are located in the West: Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona. Each of these registered growth rates exceeding 1.6 percent in 2015- 2016, and Montana, which ranked 14th, grew by 1 percent. All of these western states (Colorado excepted) grew more rapidly in 2015-16 than in 2014-15 (download Table 1).

Southern states and the District of Columbia fill out the rest of the 14 fastest growing states led by Florida (ranked fourth), along with Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia (ranked 10th through 13th). Most of these states grew more rapidly in 2015-16 than they did during much of the period surrounding the 2007-09 recession. The uptick in population growth seen in this year’s Census data could be a sign that these states are heading back toward the growth levels they experienced prior to the recession.

This story originally appeared at Brookings.edu.