Perhaps, the US are no longer moving West.

Since the 1800s when gold bullion was found beneath the Rockies and California, more and more people moved there to catch up an opportunity to generate wealth and prosperity. Although, urban areas in the Northeast, such as NYC, Philadelphia or Boston were growing fast due a massive influx of European migrants.

Here is a map with the US Mean Center of Population from 1790 to 2010, as reported by the US Census Bureau:

Starting in Maryland in 1790 and moving through VA, WV, OH, KY, IN, IL, in 2010 this center of population reached the Texas county in Missouri.

OK, it’s seems pretty obvious that the US moved west, every single decade since the first Census.

Will this trend continue?

To answer this question, two maps are presented. The first one, indicates actual demographic growth of each state compared with its peers, in the period of 2010-2013.

Dark red: <0%, light red: 0% – 1%, yellow: 1% – 2%, light green: 2% – 3%, dark green: 3%+

So it seems that America keeps going West and South…

Well, take a look to the following interesting map I created. Its colored only in red or green. Red represents states which demographic growth slowed in the last 3 years. Green means the opposite.



OK, the states which saw the biggest absolute increases in population (California, Texas and Florida) are actually decelerating, with Texas taking the hardest hit. The “decay” of the Midwest seems to be over if we take in consideration this region registered the biggest acceleration in growth, with Michigan and Indiana taking the lead. Even New England is performing better, in this indicator than the Pacific or the Gulf.


There are a lot of components that will drive growth over the next decades. US demographic change is slowing all across the country as Americans are aging. Fracking boom is pushing employment up in Texas, auto-industry is recovering in Detroit. All a bunch of things that make it hard to predict small changes, but I personally taught it was worth it to share these maps I created. For more information, contact me.