LIKE birds, people tend to move from place to place along established routes. Since the second world war, among the most travelled of these routes in America has been from the “snow belt” in the Midwest and north-east to the “sun belt” in the south and west. The recession that began in 2007 knocked Americans off course for a while, and led to confident predictions that old cities would recover some of their population losses. But people have begun to head southward and westward again.
According to recently released estimates by the census bureau, Maricopa county in Arizona, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, grew by 222 people a day on average in the year to July 2016. It overtook Harris county in Texas, home to Houston, as the county with the highest annual population growth. Cook county, which includes Chicago, saw the largest population fall in the same period, with a net loss of more than 21,000 people. Seven of America’s eight fastest-growing states are in the west. (In addition to Arizona, they are Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington; the eighth state is Florida.) Illinois, which contains Chicago, has lost more people than any other state for three years in a row.
People tend to move for...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2oZkPQ7
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