Demographic history of the United States

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Contents

[edit] Totals and Estimates

Historical populations|- Census
year		 Population
1650 50,400
1670 111,900
1690 210,400
1700 250,900
1720 466,200
1740 905,600
1750 1,170,800
1770 2,148,100
1780 2,780,400
1790 3,929,214
1810 7,239,881
1820 9,638,453
1830 12,866,020
1840 17,069,453
1850 23,191,876
1860 31,443,321
1870 38,558,371
1890 62,979,766
1900 76,212,168
1910 92,228,496
1920 106,021,537
1930 123,202,624
1940 132,164,569
1950 151,325,798
1960 179,323,175
1970 203,211,926
1980 226,545,805
1990 248,709,873
2000 281,421,906
2007 301,139,947
2010 309,162,581
2020 336,031,546
2030 363,811,435
2040 392,172,658
2050 420,080,587
2060 450,505,985
2070 480,568,004
2080 511,442,859
2090 540,405,985
2100 571,440,474

[edit] Post-War Baby Boom

In the years after WWII, the United States, as well as a number of other industrialized countries, experienced an unexpected sudden birth rate jump. The cause of the baby boom was millions of men from the US who had to fight in WWII which prevented women from starting families and women also had to take the place of men in the workplace. The millions of men coming back and couples eager to start families led to the sharp rise in the US birth rate. Since the men came back got jobs in the workplace again, women became strongly pressured to once again stay home to take care of the house and children and let their husbands be the breadwinner of the household. Women felt great pressure to be married by her early 20s or else she would be considered lonely later on in life.

The proportions of 3 child families doubled and 4 child families quadrupled.

The total fertility rate of the United States jumped from 2.49 in 1945 to 2.94 in 1946, a rise of 0.45 children therefore beginning the baby boom. It continued to rise throughout the 1940s to reach 3.09 in 1950 with a peak of 3.77 in 1957. Declining slowly thereafter to 3.65 in 1960 and finally a steep from decline after 1964, therefore ending the baby boom.

Total fertility rates 1940-2006

1940=2.30 1941=2.39 1942=2.62 1943=2.71 1944=2.56 1945=2.49 1946=2.94 1947=3.27 1948=3.10 1949=3.11 1950=3.09 1951=3.26 1952=3.35 1953=3.42 1954=3.54 1955=3.57 1956=3.68 1957=3.77 1958=3.70 1959=3.71 1960=3.65 1961=3.62 1962=3.46 1963=3.31 1964=3.19 1965=2.90 1966=2.72 1967=2.55 1968=2.46 1969=2.45 1970=2.48 1971=2.26 1972=2.01 1973=1.87 1974=1.83 1975=1.77 1976=1.73 1977=1.76 1978=1.80 1979=1.79 1980=1.83 1981=1.81 1982=1.79 1983=1.82 1984=1.85 1985=1.86 1986=1.86 1987=1.90 1988=1.96 1989=2.04 1990=2.08 1991=2.06 1992=2.04 1993=2.01 1994=1.99 1995=1.97 1996=1.97 1997=1.97 1998=2.00 1999=2.03 2000=2.05 2001=2.03 2002=2.01 2003=2.03 2004=2.05 2005=2.05 2006=2.10

The number of children aged 0-4 sprouted to 16,410,000 in 1950 from 11,000,000 in 1940, it continued into the 1960s where it peaked at 20,000,000 children under the age of 5.

The number of children under 19 rose to 69 million in 1960 from 51 million in 1950, a 35.3% increase, while the proportion of the population rose to 38.8% up from 33.8% in 1950.

[edit] Population Growth Patterns Projections

The US population in 1900 was 76 million. In 1950, it rose to 152 million by 2000 it had reached 282 million. By 2050, it is expected to reach 420 million; in 2100, the estimate is 571 million.



[edit] Historical distribution

Population distribution in 1790

Population distribution in 1800

Population distribution in 1820

Historical movement of U.S. population. Each state's brightness represents its percent share of the national population.

[edit] Immigration

[edit] Colonial Era

Nearly all commercial activity was run in small privately owned businesses with good credit both at home and in England being essential since they were often cash poor. Most settlements were nearly independent of trade with Britain as most grew or made nearly everything they needed--the average cost of imports per most households was only about 5-15 English pounds per year. Most settlements were created by complete family groups with several generations often present in each settlement. Probably close to 80% of the families owned the land they lived and farmed on. They nearly all used English Common Law as their basic code of law and, except initially for the Dutch, Swedes, and Germans, spoke some dialect of English. They nearly all established their own popularly elected governments and courts on as many levels as they could and were, within a few years, mostly armed, self governing, self supporting and self replicating.

This self ruling pattern became so ingrained that almost all new settlements by one or more groups of settlers would have their own government up and running shortly after they settled down for the next 200 years. Nearly all, after a hundred years plus of living together, had learned to tolerate other religions than their own. This was a major improvement from the often very bloody Reformation and Counter-Reformation wars going on in Europe in this period.

British troops, up until the French and Indian War in the 1760s, were a great rarity in the colonies, as the colonists provided nearly all the law enforcement and militia forces they wanted or needed from their own ranks. The American Revolution was in many ways a fight to maintain the property and independence they already enjoyed, as the British tried, belatedly, to exploit them for the benefit of the crown and Parliament. Nearly all colonies and, later, states in the United States were settled by migration from another colony or state, as foreign immigration usually only played a minor role after the initial settlements were started. Many new immigrants did end up on the frontiers as that was where the land was usually the cheapest.

[edit] New England

The New England colonists were the most urban and educated of all the colonists and had many skilled farmers, as well as tradesmen and skilled craftsmen, among them. They mostly settled in small villages for mutual support (nearly all had their own militias) and common religious activity. Shipbuilding, commerce, agriculture and fisheries were their main income sources. New England's healthy climate (the cold winters killed the mosquitoes and other disease-bearing insects), small wide-spread villages (minimizing spread of disease), and abundant food supply resulted in the lowest death rate and highest birth rate of any place in the world (marriage was expected and birth control was not, and a much higher than average number of children and mothers survived).

The eastern and northern frontier around the initial New England settlements was mainly settled by the Yankee descendants of the original New Englanders. Emigration to the New England colonies after 1640 and the start of the English Civil War decreased to less than 1% (about equal to the death rate) in nearly all years prior to 1845. The rapid growth of the New England colonies (total population ~700,000 by 1790) was almost entirely due to the high birth rate (>3%) and low death rate (<1%) per year.

[edit] Middle Colonies

The middle colonies' settlements were scattered west of New York City, New York (est. 1626, taken over by the English in 1664) and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (est. 1682). The Dutch-started colony of New York had the most eclectic collection of residents from many different nations and prospered as a major trading and commercial center after about 1700. The Pennsylvania colonial center was dominated by the Quakers for decades after they emigrated there, mainly from the North Midlands of England, from about 1680 to 1725. The main commercial center of Philadelphia was run mostly by prosperous Quakers, supplemented by many small farming and trading communities with strong German contingents located in the Delaware River valley.

Many more settlers arrived in the middle colonies starting in about 1680, when Pennsylvania was founded and many Protestant sects were encouraged to settle there for freedom of religion and good, cheap land. These settlers were of about 60% British and 33% German extraction. By 1780 in New York about 17% of the population were descendants of Dutch settlers. The rest were mostly English with a wide mixture of other Europeans and about 6% Blacks. New Jersey and Delaware had a majority of British with 7-11% German-descended colonists, about a 6% black population, and a small contingent of Swedish descendants of New Sweden. Nearly all were at least third-generation natives.

[edit] Frontier

The colonial western frontier was mainly settled from about 1717 to 1775 by mostly Presbyterian settlers from northern England border lands, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, fleeing bad times and persecution in those areas. After the American Revolution, these same areas in Britain were the first to resume significant immigration. Most initially landed in family groups in Philadelphia or Baltimore but soon migrated to the western frontier where land was cheaper and restrictions less onerous.

[edit] Natural Growth

All the colonies, after they were started, grew almost entirely by natural growth, with foreign born populations rarely exceeding 10% in isolated instances. The last significant colonies to be settled mainly by immigrants were Pennsylvania in the early 1700s and Georgia and the Borderlands in the late 1700s, as migration (not immigration) continued to provide nearly all the settlers for each new colony or state. This pattern would continue throughout U.S. History. The extent of colonial settlements by 1800 is shown by this map from the [great] University of Texas map collection. [1]

Estimated Population of American Colonies 1620 to 1780

Series Z-19 U.S. Census
Year 1780 1760 1740 1720 1700 1680 1660 1640 1620
Tot Pop. 2,780,400 1,593,600 905,600 466,200 250,900 151,500 75,100 26,600 500
Maine -1 49,100 20,000 - - - - - 900 -
New Hampshire-2 87,800 39,100 23,300 9,400 5,000 2,000 1,600 1,100 -
Vermont -3 47,600 - - - - - - - -
Plymouth -4 - - - - - 6,400 2,000 1,000 100
Massachusetts 268,600 202,600 151,600 91,000 55,900 39,800 20,100 8,900
Rhode Island 52,900 45,500 25,300 11,700 5,900 3,000 1,500 300 -
Connecticut 206,700 142,500 89,600 58,800 26,000 17,200 8,000 1,500 -
New York 210,500 117,100 63,700 36,900 19,100 9,800 4,900 1,900 -
New Jersey 139,600 93,800 51,400 29,800 14,000 3,400 - - -
Pennsylvania 327,300 183,700 85,600 31,000 18,000 700 - - -
Delaware 45,400 33,300 19,900 5,400 2,500 1,000 500 - -
Maryland 245,500 162,300 116,100 66,100 29,600 17,900 8,400 500 -
Virginia 538,000 339,700 180,400 87,800 58,600 43,600 27,000 10,400 400
North Carolina 270,100 110,400 51,800 21,300 10,700 5,400 1,000 - -
South Carolina 180,000 94,100 45,000 17,000 5,700 1,200 - - -
Georgia 56,100 9,600 2,000 - - - - - -
Kentucky 45,000 - - - - - - - -
Tennessee 10,000 - - - - - - -
Year 1780 1760 1740 1720 1700 1680 1660 1640 1620
New Eng. (ME to CT) 712,800 449,600 289,700 170,900 92,800 68,500 33,200 13,700 100
% Black -5 2.0% 2.8% 2.9% 2.3% 1.8% 0.7% 1.8% 1.5% 0.0%
Middle (NY to DE) 722,900 427,900 220,600 103,100 53,600 14,900 5,400 1,900 -
% Black -6 5.9% 6.8% 7.5% 10.5% 6.9% 10.1% 11.1% 10.5% 0.0%
South (MD to TN) 1,344,700 716,000 395,300 192,300 104,600 68,100 36,400 11,000 400
% Black -7 38.6% 39.7% 31.6% 28.1% 21.5% 7.3% 4.7% 1.8% 0.0%
  1. Maine was part of Massachusetts from about 1652 to 1820, when it was granted statehood.
  2. New Hampshire was part of Massachusetts until about 1685, when it was split off and established under a British appointed governor. It was one of the original 13 colonies.
  3. Vermont was contested between the French and British settlers until the French and Indian war (1758-1765) drove out the French authorities. The territory was then disputed between Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire until the settlers declared their independence from all of them and were accepted as the 14th state in 1791 and participated in the 1790 census a year late.
  4. Plymouth, Massachusetts despite being the first permanent New England settlement, lost its charter in 1690 and became part of the Massachusetts colony.
  5. By 1784 all slavery in the New England states was either completely prohibited or transitioning to its total prohibition.
  6. By 1804 all slavery in the Middle colonies (except Delaware [6.6% Black]) was either completely prohibited or was transitioning to its total prohibition.
  7. All slavery was prohibited in the entire U.S. in 1865 by the 13th amendment to the constitution.

Population growth is nearly always by natural increase but significant immigration can sometimes be seen in some states when populations grow by more than 80% {a 3% growth rate) in a 20 year interval.

[edit] Population in 1790

According to the source, The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy by Kory L. Meyerink and Loretto Dennis Szucs, the following were the countries of origin for new arrivals coming to the United States before 1790. The regions marked * were part of Great Britain. The ancestry of the 3.9 million population in 1790 has been estimated by various sources by sampling last names in the 1790 census and assigning them a country of origin. The Irish in the 1790 census were mostly Scots Irish. The French were mostly Huguenots. The total U.S. Catholic population in 1790 was probably less than 5%. The Indian population inside territorial U.S. 1790 boundaries was less than 100,000.

U.S. Historical Populations
Country Immigrants Before 1790 Population 1790 -1
Africa -2 360,000 757,000
England* 230,000 2,100,000
Ulster Scot-Irish* 135,000 300,000
Germany -3 103,000 270,000
Scotland* 48,500 150,000
Ireland* 8,000 (Incl. in Scot-Irish)
Netherlands 6,000 100,000
Wales* 4,000 10,000
France 3,000 15,000
Jews -4 1,000 2,000
Sweden 500 2,000
Other -5 50,000 200,000
Total -6 950,000 3,900,000
  1. Data From Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPS)
  2. Several West African regions were the home to most African immigrants. Population from US 1790 Census
  3. Germany in this time period consists of a large number of separate countries, the largest of which was Prussia.
  4. Jewish settlers were from several European countries.
  5. The Other category probably contains mostly English ancestry settlers; but the loss of several states detailed census records in the burning of Washington D.C. in the War of 1812 makes estimating closer difficult. Nearly all states that lost their 1790 (and 1800) census records have tried to reconstitute their original census from tax records etc. with various degrees of success. The summaries of the 1790 and 1800 census from all states survived.
  6. The Total is the total immigration over the approximately 130 year span of colonial existence of the U.S. colonies as found in the 1790 census. Many of the colonists, especially from the New England colonies, are already into their fifth generation of being in America. At the time of the American Revolution the foreign born population is estimated to be from 300,000 to 400,000.

The 1790 population already reflects the approximate 50,000 “Loyalists or Tories”, who emigrated to Canada at the end of the American Revolution and the less than 10,000 more who emigrated to other British possessions including England.

Already by 1790 the ancestry question is starting to become meaningless as many people from many different countries intermarry in each generation and nearly all these ancestries are starting to merge to become American. The total white population in 1790 was about 80% British ancestry and roughly doubles by natural increase every 25 years. The native born population of the U.S. has never fallen below 85% of the population after about 1675--100 years before the American Revolution.

Relentless population expansion pushed the U.S. frontier to the Pacific by 1848. Given the U.S. geography, most immigrants came long distances to settle in the U.S.. However the Irish leaving Canada for the US in the 1840s, the French Canadians who came down from Quebec after 1860, and the Mexicans who came north after 1911, found it easy to move back and forth.

[edit] Immigration 1790 to 1849

In the early years of the U.S., immigration was only about 6000 people a year on average, including French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti. The French Revolution, starting in 1789, and the Napoleonic Wars from 1792 to 1814 severely limited immigration from Europe. The War of 1812 (1812-1814) with Britain again prevented any significant immigration. By 1808 Congress had banned the importation of slaves, slowing that human traffic to a trickle.

After 1820 immigration gradually increased. For the first time federal records, including ship passenger lists, were kept for immigration. Total immigration for one year in 1820 was 8,385, gradually building to 23,322 by 1830, with 143,000 total immigrating during the intervening decade. From 1831 to 1840 immigration increased greatly, to 599,000 total, as 207,000 Irish, even before the famine of 1845-49, started to emigrate in large numbers as Britain eased travel restrictions. 152,000 Germans, 76,000 British, and 46,000 French formed the next largest immigrant groups in that decade.

From 1841 to 1850 immigration exploded to 1,713,000 total immigrants as at least 781,000 Irish, with the famine of 1845-1919 driving them, fled their homeland to escape poverty and death. In attempting to divert some of this traffic to help settle Canada, the British offered bargain fares of 15 shillings for transit to Canada, instead of the normal 5 pounds (100 shillings). Thousands of poor Irish took advantage of this offer and headed to Canada on what came to be called the "coffin ships" because of their high death rates. Once in Canada, many Irish walked across the border or caught an intercoastal freighter to the nearest major city in the United States - usually Boston or New York.

Bad potato crops and failed revolutions struck the heart of Europe in 1848, contributing to the decade's total of 435,000 Germans, 267,000 British and 77,000 French immigrants to America. Bad times in Europe drove people out; land, relatives, freedom, opportunity, and jobs in America lured them in.

Population and Foreign Born 1790 to 1849
Census Population, Immigrants per Decade
Census Population Immigrants-1 Foreign Born  %
1790 3,918,000 60,000
1800 5,236,000 60,000
1810 7,036,000 60,000
1820 10,086,000 60,000
1830 12,785,000 143,000 200,000 -2 1.6%
1840 17,018,000 599,000 800,000 -2 4.7%
1850 23,054,000 1,713,000 2,244,000 9.7%

The number of immigrants from 1830 on are from immigration records. The census of 1850 was the first census in which place of birth was asked. It is probably a reasonable estimate that the foreign born population in the U.S. reached its minimum in about 1815 at something like 100,000, or 1.4% of the population. By 1815 most of the immigrants that arrived before the American Revolution had passed on, and there had been almost no new immigration.

  1. The total number immigrating in each decade from 1790 to 1820 are estimates.
  2. The number foreign born in 1830 and 1840 decades are extrapolations.

Nearly all population growth up to 1830 was by internal increase; about 98.5% of the population was native-born. By 1850, this had shifted to about 90% native-born. The first significant Catholic immigration started in the mid 1840s.

In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, concluding the Mexican War, extended U.S. citizenship to approximately 60,000 Mexican residents of the New Mexico Territory and 10,000 living in California. In 1849, the California Gold Rush spurred significant immigration from Mexico, South America, China, Australia, Europe and caused a mass migration within the US, resulting in California gaining statehood in 1850, with a population of about 90,000.

[edit] Rural flight

Rural flight is the departure of excess populations (usually young men and women) from farm areas. In some cases whole families left, as in the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Much of rural America has seen steady population decline since 1920.

[edit] Black Migration out of South

see Great Migration (African American)

The Great Migration was the movement of millions African Americans out of the rural Southern United States from 1914 to 1960. Most moved to large industrial cities, as well as to many smaller industrial cities. African-Americans moved as individuals or small groups. There was no government assistance. They migrated because of a variety of push and pull factors:

[edit] Pull factors

  1. Income levels were much higher in the North, with far higher wages in the service sector.
  2. The enormous growth of war industries in WW1 and WW2 created new job openings for blacks—not in the factories but in the service jobs that new factory workers vacated;
  3. World War I effectively put a halt to the flow of European immigrants to the emerging industrial centers Northeast and Midwest, causing shortages of workers in the factories.
  4. In the 1930s Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps and other relief programs in the North were more receptive to blacks. The WPA paid more in the North.
  5. After 1940, as the U.S. rearmed for World War II (see Homefront-United States-World War II), industrial production in the Northeast, Midwest and West increased rapidly.
  6. The FEPC equal opportunity laws were more enforced in the North and West.[1]

[edit] Demographic models in Historiography

[edit] Easterlin Models

Richard Easterlin is an economist and professor of economics who has researched and published much literature on economic growth in the United States. In one of Richard Easterlin’s articles, published in 2000 and titled, Twentieth Century American Population Growth, he explains the growth pattern of American population in the twentieth century by examining the fertility rate fluctuations and the decreasing mortality rate. In his article, Easterlin attempts to prove the cause of the Baby Boom and Baby Bust by the “relative income” theory, despite the various other theories that these events have been attributed to.

The “relative income” theory suggests that couples choose to have children based on a couple’s ratio of potential earning power and the desire to obtain material objects. This ratio depends on the economic stability of the country in which they live and how people are raised to value material objects. The “relative income” theory explains the Baby Boom by suggesting that the late 1940s and 1950s brought low desires to have material objects, as a result of the Great Depression and WWII, as well as huge job opportunities, because of it being a post war period. These two factors gave rise to a high relative income, which encouraged high fertility. Following this period, the next generation had a greater desire for material objects; however, an economic slowdown in the United States made jobs harder to acquire. This resulted in lower fertility rates, causing the Baby Bust.


[edit] State Trends

Between 1880 and 1900, the urban population of the United States rose from 28% to 40% (1), and reached 50% by 1920, in part due to 9,000,000 European immigrants. After 1890 the US rural population began to plummet, as farmers were displaced by mechanization and forced to migrate to urban factory jobs. After World War II, the US experienced a shift away from the cities, mostly due to the gaining popularity of the automobile and heavy government funding of suburban housing and highways. Many of the original manufacturing cities lost as much as half their populations between 1950 and 1980. There was a shift in the population from the dense manufacturing centers of the Northeast (Rust Belt) to the outer suburbs of these cities, and to newer, less dense cities in the Southwest (Sun Belt).

[edit] Arizona

In the 1990s, Arizona's rural population grew by 29% while the rural retiree population grew by 43%.

[edit] Colorado

During the 1990s, Colorado's rural working-age population grew by 40% and the rural retiree population grew by 23%. The statewide population grew 31%, the statewide retiree population grew by 27%, and the statewide working-age population grew by 31%.

[edit] Florida

In the 1990s, the population of Florida's rural counties grew 25%. The state's rural retiree population grew 28%. The overall population increased by 24%, while the retiree population increased 19%. It's projected to surpass New York as the 3rd most populous state between 2009-2014.

[edit] Illinois

During the 1990s the rural population of Illinois increased by 1%, while the population of Chicago, Illinois increased 12%.

[edit] Kansas

During the 1990s the rural population of Kansas increased by 2%, while the statewide increase was 9%.

[edit] Minnesota

During the 1990s, the population of Minnesota increased 12%. The working-age population increased 14% and the retiree population increased 9%.

[edit] North Dakota

In the 1990s, the rural population of North Dakota decreased 6% while the overall population remained constant.

[edit] Washington

During the 1990s, Washington's rural population grew by 20%. Meanwhile, the rural working-age population grew 22% and the rural retiree population grew 16%. Overall there was 21% growth, with 23% for statewide working-age populations and 15% for retirees.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Richard E. Barrett, Donald J. Bogue, and Douglas L. Anderton. The Population of the United States 3rd Edition (1997) compendium of data
  • Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, and Alan L. Olmstead, eds. The Historical Statistics of the United States (Cambridge UP: 6 vol; 2006) vol 1 on population; available online; massive data compendium; online bersion in Excel
  • Chadwick Bruce A. and Tim B. Heaton, eds. Statistical Handbook on the American Family. (1992)
  • Gerhan David R. and Robert V. Wells. A Retrospective Bibliography of American Demographic History from Colonial Times to 1983. ( Greenwood Press, 1989)
  • Michael R. Haines and Richard H. Steckel (eds.), A Population History of North America. Cambridge University Press, 2000, 752 pp. advanced scholarship
  • Hawes Joseph M. and Elizabeth I. Nybakken, eds. American Families: a Research Guide and Historical Handbook. (Greenwood Press, 1991)
  • Klein, Herbert S. A Population History of the United States. Cambridge University Press, 2004. 316 pp
  • Mintz Steven and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: a Social History of American Family Life. (1988)
  • Riley Moffat. Population History of Western U.S. Cities and Towns, 1850-1990 (1996); Population History of Eastern U.S. Cities and Towns, 1790-1870 (1992)
  • U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (1976)
  • Robert V. Wells. Revolutions in Americans' Lives: A Demographic Perspective on the History of Americans, Their Families, and Their Society (1982)
  • Robert V. Wells. Uncle Sam's Family (1985), general demographic history

[edit] Primary sources

[edit] References

  1. ^ Grossman, James R. Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (1991); Lemann, Nicholas. The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1992); and Scott, Emmett J., Negro Migration during the War (1920).

[edit] See also

v • d • e
Demographics of the United States
Demographic history
Economic and social
Religion
Race,
ethnicity and
ancestry
Languages