Migration
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Nationwide, 58.7% of U.S. residents currently live in the same state they were born in, according to 2010-2014 American Community Survey data. This ranges from a high of 78% in Louisiana to a low of 25% in Nevada. North Carolina is similar to the national average: 57.8% of North Carolina state residents were born here. Among North Carolina’s counties, the proportion NC-native ranges from less than 1 in 3 residents in both Currituck (25.5%) and…
“The growth of urban places historically has been fueled largely by in-migration from rural areas (including from other countries)…” – Daniel Lichter & David Brown, “Rural America in an Urban Society” Nearly half of North Carolina’s counties – 47 of 100 – had net out-migration between 2010 and 2015, meaning more people moved away than moved in. There are some clear patterns to this movement. The core counties of the state’s major metropolitan areas—such as…
On average, Wake County added 63 new residents every day between April 1, 2010, and July 1, 2014, according to U.S. Census Bureau population estimates. Both natural increase, more births than deaths, and net migration, more people moving in than moving out, are important for Wake’s population growth, but the main driver is net migration. Every year since 1970, net migration into Wake County has accounted for the majority of its population growth. Since 2010, two-thirds of…
Between 1820 and 2013, nearly 79.5 million immigrants have become lawful permanent residents of the United States according to the Department of Homeland Security’s records. The chart below shows the volume of U.S. immigration by immigrant continent of origin for each decade since 1820. (Note that the volume of immigration drops for 2010-2013 because the decade is only partially complete.) There have been three major waves of immigration into the United States since 1820, marked…
“When the Current Population Survey started collecting migration information in 1948, about one-in-five people moved over a one-year period. Today, that number has fallen to about one in nine.” – David Ihrke, U.S. Census Bureau Moving is a common experience. The average American will move about 12 times in their lifetime. Most of these moves are clustered in young adulthood, as individuals move to go to school, start jobs, and form families. In North Carolina,…
Within the span of two days, I received two emails asking about the most common sending states for new residents to North Carolina. The most recent inquiry wrote: “What state do most people move from when coming to NC? My guess is NY- or the North East area. Another person I know is insistent that more people move here from Florida.” In this debate, both people are right, depending on how you measure migration. Migration…
Forty-two percent of North Carolina residents were born in another state or country. In 1950, this proportion was only 15%. The share of North Carolina residents born in state declines steadily with age until prime working-ages, and then begins rising again. Between ages 27 and 50, more than half of North Carolina residents were born in another state or country. North Carolina’s trends in the proportion of native-born residents by age look similar to those of…
“The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States has stabilized since the end of the Great Recession and shows no sign of rising, according to new Pew Research Center estimates. The marked slowdown in new arrivals means that those who remain are more likely to be long-term residents, and to live with their U.S.-born children.” – Jeffrey S. Passel, D’Vera Cohn, Jens Manuel Krogstad, and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, “As Growth Stalls, Unauthorized Immigrant Population…
“When someone says the word “immigrant,” many people likely picture Europeans moving through Ellis Island during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Others think of a more recent time — especially after 1980 — when most immigrants arrived from countries in Latin America, such as Mexico, and, to a lesser extent, Asia. However, it may be surprising to learn that recent data show that the African foreign-born population is one of the fastest growing…
[caption id="attachment_1782" align="aligncenter" width="550" class=" "] Image Source: Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau[/caption] Though migration is a hard event to capture, there is rich data—60 years of it, in fact!—for every county in the United States, courtesy of the “Net Migration Patterns for US Counties” project at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Nearly every geography has a unique migration profile that can be differentiated by age, race, and gender. These profiles tell us a…
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