Census: Rural America shrinks as people flock to big cities
The number of Americans who live in rural areas continued to shrink in the last decade while the nation’s largest cities grew substantially, according to new data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Fewer than half of the 3,143 counties in the United States added population over the last decade, the new census data shows. The share of Americans who live in nonmetropolitan rural areas dropped by 2.8 percentage points, the Bureau said Thursday.
As of April 2020, just more than 86 percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas, counties that include or are adjacent to major cities with populations of 50,000 or more, an all-time high.
About 4 in 5 metropolitan areas grew over the last decade, including all 10 of the nation’s largest cities.
New York City population hits 8.8 million
NEW YORK (AP) – New York City, long the country’s largest metropolis, grew more populous over the past decade — adding 629,000 people to bring its population to more than 8.8 million, according to U.S. census data released Thursday, underscoring the demographic shifts that are further concentrating the country’s population in its largest urban areas.
Other surging large cities in the Sun Belt also gained ground and, despite the Big Apple’s modest growth, New York state overall did not keep pace with growth in some other big states because of continuing population declines upstate.