HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

This article is about the
demographic Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as edu ...
history of the United States.


Historical Census population

The following table shows 16102020 population data. The census numbers don't include Native Americans during 1610, and then again after 1860.Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990...
. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved 2013-05-28.
a
U.S. Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...
2020 census.


Median age at marriage

From 1890 to 2021, the
median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fe ...
age at first marriage was as follows:


Immigration


Earlier colonial era

Nearly all non-Native American 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 for most households was only about 5-15 English pounds per year. Most settlements were created by complete family groups with several generations often present. 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 for the French, Dutch and Germans spoke some dialect of English. They established their own popularly elected governments and courts and were mostly self-governing, self-supporting, and self-replicating. 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 first initial settlements were established.


New England

The New England colonists included some educated men as well as many skilled farmers, tradesmen and craftsmen. They were mostly farmers and settled in small villages for common religious activity. Shipbuilding, commerce, and fisheries were important in coastal towns. New England's healthy climate (the cold winters killed mosquitoes and other disease-bearing insects), 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 The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Its various senses depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, residents of the Northern United St ...
descendants of the original New Englanders. Emigration to the New England colonies after 1640 and the start of the
English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...
decreased to less than 1% (about equal to the death rate) in nearly all years before 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.


Middle colonies

The middle colonies' settlements were scattered west of
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, New York (est. 1626 by Dutch, taken over by the English in 1664) and
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
,
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
(est. 1682). The Dutch-started colony of New York had an eclectic collection of residents from many different nations and prospered as a major trading and commercial center after about 1700. Pennsylvania 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% German and 33% English extraction. By 1780 about 27% of New York's population were descendants of Dutch settlers (55,000 of 204,000). New Jersey was home to the remaining Dutch and they constituted 14% of the population of 140,000. The rest were mostly English with a mixture of other Europeans and about 6% Blacks. New Jersey and Delaware had a majority of British with 20% German-descended colonists, about a 6% black population, and a small contingent of Swedish descendants of
New Sweden New Sweden ( sv, Nya Sverige) was a Swedish colony along the lower reaches of the Delaware River in what is now the United States from 1638 to 1655, established during the Thirty Years' War when Sweden was a great military power. New Sweden f ...
. Nearly all were at least third-generation natives.


South

The main feature of the economy in Virginia, Maryland and South Carolina was large plantations growing staples for export, especially tobacco and rice. Outside the plantations, land was farmed by independent farmers who rented from the proprietors, or (most often) owned it outright. They emphasized subsistence farming to grow food for their large families. Many of the Irish immigrants specialized in making rye whiskey, which they sold to obtain cash. In Maryland, by 1700 there were about 25,000 people and by 1750 that had grown more than 5 times to 130,000. By 1755, about 40% of Maryland's population was black.


Frontier

From 1717 to 1775 the western frontier was populated primarily by Presbyterian settlers who migrated from Scotland and Ireland. Frontier settlers initially landed in Philadelphia or Baltimore before migrating to the western frontier for the cheaper land.


Natural growth

All the colonies grew mostly by natural growth, with foreign born populations rarely exceeding 10%. The last significant colonies to be settled mainly by immigrants were Pennsylvania in the early 18th century and Georgia and the Borderlands in the late 18th century, as internal 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 University of Texas map collection.


Population in 1790

According to one source 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 from 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 Huguenots ( , also , ) were a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss politica ...
. The total U.S. Catholic population in 1790 is estimated at 40,000 or 1.6%, perhaps a low count due to prejudice. The Native American Indian population inside territorial U.S. 1790 boundaries was less than 100,000. # Data From
Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Washtenaw County. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor ...
: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPS) # Several West African regions were the home to most African slaves transported to America. Population from US 1790 Census #
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
in this time period consists of a large number of separate countries, the largest of which was Prussia. #
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
settlers were from several European countries. # The ''Other'' category probably contains mostly settlers of English ancestry. However, the loss of several states' detailed census records in the
Burning of Washington The Burning of Washington was a British invasion of Washington City (now Washington, D.C.), the capital of the United States, during the Chesapeake Campaign of the War of 1812. It is the only time since the American Revolutionary War that a ...
D.C. in the
War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...
makes estimation 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. # 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, were already into their fifth generation of being in America. At the time of the
American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...
the foreign born population is estimated to be from 300,000 to 400,000. During the 17th century, approximately 350-400,000 English people migrated to Colonial America. However only half stayed permanently. They were 90% of whites in 1700. From 1700 to 1775 between 400-500,000 Europeans immigrated, 90% of whom were Scots, Scots-Irish, Irish, Germans and Huguenots. Only 45,000 English immigrated in the period 1701 to 1775, a figure that has been questioned as too low. Elsewhere the number given is 51,000 (80,000 in total less 29,000 Welsh). The figure of 45,000 has been questioned as a "mystery". These numbers do not include the 50,000-120,000 convicts transported, 33,000 of whom were English. Even the very high birth rate may not account for all of the nine-fold increase from 230,000 to 2.1 million. Another estimate with very similar results to the ICPS study (except for the French and Swedish totals) gives the number of Americans of English ancestry as 1.9 million in 1790 or 47.9% of the total of 3.930 million (3.5% Welsh, 8.5% Scotch Irish, 4.3% Scots, Irish (South) 4.7%, German 7.3%, Dutch 2.7%, French 1.7%, Swedish 0.2% and Black, 19.3%. The southern Irish were overwhelmingly Protestant. The 1790 population reflected the approximate 50,000 "Loyalists" who had emigrated to Canada during and at the end of the American Revolution, 7-10,000 of whom went to the United Kingdom and 6,000 to the Caribbean. Thirty thousand Americans emigrated to Ontario. Canada in the 1790s, often referred to as "Late Loyalists." They were mostly not political refugees but went for generous land grants and taxes 75 percent lower than in the United States. By 1790 the ancestry question was starting to become irrelevant to many, as intermarriage from different ethnic groups was becoming common, causing people to form a common American identity. The total white population in 1790 was about 80% of British ancestry, and would go on to roughly double by natural increase every 25 years. From about 1675 onward, the native-born population of what would become the United States would never again drop below 85% of the total.


Immigration 1791 to 1849

In the early years of the United States, immigration average about 6,000 people per year, including French
refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.
s from the slave revolt in
Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...
. The
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
, starting in 1789, and the
Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
from 1792 to 1814 severely limited immigration from Europe. The
War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...
(1812–1814) with Britain again prevented any significant immigration. By 1808 Congress had banned the transport 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 the year 1820 was 8,385, gradually building to 23,322 by 1830, with 143,000 total immigrating during the 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 and at least 781,000 Irish who fled their homeland to escape poverty or death during the famine of 1845-1849. 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. The number of immigrants from 1830 on are from immigration records. The census of 1850 was the first 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 The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...
had died, and there had been almost no new immigration. # ''The total number immigrating in each decade from 1790 to 1820 are estimates.'' # ''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.


Immigration 1965 to present

In 1965, U.S. immigration law changes reduced the emphasis on national origin. Prior policy favored European immigrants. The 1965 law directed that those with relatives in the U.S. or employer sponsorship now had priority. By the 1970s, most immigrants to the U.S. came from Latin America or Asia, rather than Europe. Since 2000, over three quarters of all immigrants to the U.S. have come from Asia and Latin America.


Migration within the United States


The American West

In 1848, the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ( es, Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo), officially the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement between the United States of America and the United Mexican States, is the peace treaty that was signed on 2 ...
, concluding the Mexican War, extended U.S. citizenship to approximately 60,000 Mexican residents of the
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
Territory and 10,000 living in
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. However, much like Texas, the Mexican government had encouraged immigration and settlement of these regions from groups in the United States and Europe. Approximately half of this population is estimated to have been of American origin. In 1849, the
California Gold Rush The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...
spurred significant immigration from Mexico, South America, China, Australia, Europe and caused a mass internal migration within the U.S., resulting in California gaining statehood in 1850, with a population of about 90,000.


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 The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of both natural factors (severe drought) a ...
in the 1930s. Much of rural America has seen steady population decline since 1920.


Black migration out of the South

The Great Migration was the movement of millions of
African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
out of the rural
Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
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:


Push factors

# Many African-Americans wanted to avoid the lynching and racial segregation of the
Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
South and sought refuge in the supposed "Promised Land" of the North where there was thought to be less segregation. # The
boll weevil The boll weevil (''Anthonomus grandis'') is a beetle that feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central Mexico, it migrated into the United States from Mexico in the late 19th century and had infested all U.S. cotton-growin ...
infestation of the
cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus ''Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor perce ...
fields of the South in the late 1910s, reduced the demand for
sharecroppers Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...
. # The
Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with inundated in depths of up to over the course of several months in early 1927. The uninflated cost of the damage has been estimat ...
and its aftermath displaced hundreds of thousands of African-American farm workers;


Pull factors

# Income levels were much higher in the North, with far higher wages in the service sector. # The enormous growth of war industries in WW1 and WW2 created new job openings for blacks. #
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
effectively put a halt to the flow of European immigrants to the industrial centers, causing shortages of workers in the factories. # In the 1930s
Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
,
Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...
and other relief programs in the North were more receptive to blacks. The WPA paid more in the North. # After 1940, as the U.S. rearmed for
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
(see
Homefront-United States-World War II The United States home front during World War II supported the war effort in many ways, including a wide range of volunteer efforts and submitting to government-managed Rationing in the United States, rationing and price controls. There was a gen ...
), industrial production increased rapidly. # The FEPC equal opportunity laws were more enforced in the North and West.


Since 1990

The proportion of Americans who move across state lines fell by 50% from 1990 to 2018. Regional disparities in local economies have also grown during this time, meaning that more people remain in economically depressed areas. By 2011, migration levels were at the lowest level since
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, and were in the longest period of continuous decline in the twentieth century.


Recent demographic trends


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. During WWII birthrates had been low, as millions of men had been away fighting in WWII and this had deterred women from starting families: women also had to take the place of men in the workplace, while simultaneously fulfilling their household duties. The millions of men coming back to the US after WWII, and the couples eager to start families, led to a sharp rise in the US birth rate, and a surge in new housing construction in the suburbs and outlying areas of the cities. Since the men who came back got jobs in the workplace again, married women stayed home to take care of the house and children and let their husbands be the
breadwinner The breadwinner model is a paradigm of family centered on a breadwinner, "the member of a family who earns the money to support the others." Traditionally, the earner works outside the home to provide the family with income and benefits such as ...
of the household. During the baby boom years, between 1946 and 1964, the birth rate doubled for third children and tripled for fourth children. The number of children aged 0–4 increased 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. 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 3.10 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.


Marriages

According to statistics, the United States currently has the highest marriage rate in the developed world, as of 2008, with a marriage rate of 7.1 per 1,000 people or 2,162,000 marriages. The average age for first marriage for men is 27.4 and 25.6 years for women. The United States also has one of the highest proportions of people who do marry by age 40; approximately 85% Americans are married at 40, compared to only 60% in Sweden. During the 1930s, the number of marriages and the marriage rate dropped steeply due to the Great Depression, but rebounded almost immediately after the Depression ended. Marriage rates increased and remained at high levels in the late 1930 to the mid-1940s. The number of marriages shot up to reach over 2 million in 1946, with a marriage rate of 16.4 per 1,000 people as WWII had ended. The average age at first marriage for both men and women began to fall after WWII, dropping 22.8 for men and 20.3 for women in 1950 and dropping even more to 22.5 and 20.1 years in 1956. In 1959, the United States Census Bureau estimated that 47% of all brides marrying for their first time were teenagers aged 19 and under. In 1955, 51.2% of women were married by their 20th birthday and 88% by their 25th birthday; 40.3% of men and 28.5% of women aged 20–24 in 1955 had never married, down from 77.8% for men and 57.4% for women in 1940. As of 2002, 4.3% of men and 18.1% of women aged 20 are married, increasing to 37% of men and 52% of women by age 25, and then 61% of men and 76% of women by age 30.


Population growth projections

The U.S. 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 422-458 million, depending on immigration.


Demographic models in historiography

Richard Easterlin Richard Ainley Easterlin (born 12 January 1926) is a professor of economics at the University of Southern California. He is best known for the economic theory named after him, the Easterlin paradox. Another of his contributions is the Easterl ...
, an economist who has researched economic growth in the United States, explains the growth pattern of the American population in the 20th century through fertility rate fluctuations and the decreasing mortality rate. Easterlin has attempted to explain the cause of the Baby Boom and Baby Bust through the "relative income" theory. 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.


State trends

Between 1880 and 1900, the urban population of the United States rose from 28% to 40%, and reached 50% by 1920, in part due to 9,000,000
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
an
immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, a ...
. 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 and into suburbs mostly due to the cost of land, the availability of low-cost government home loans, fair housing policies, and the construction of 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 city centers filled with apartments, row homes, and tenements; to less dense suburban neighborhoods outside the cities which were filled with single-family homes.


See also

*
Demographic history Demographic history is the reconstructed record of human population in the past. Given the lack of population records prior to the 1950s, there are many gaps in our record of demographic history. Historical demographers must make do with estimates, ...
*
Depopulation of the Great Plains The depopulation of the Great Plains refers to the large-scale migration of people from rural areas of the Great Plains of the United States to more urban areas and to the east and west coasts during the 20th century. This phenomenon of rural-t ...
* Great Migration (African American) *
Historical demography Historical demography is the quantitative study of human population in the past. It is concerned with population size, with the three basic components of population change (fertility, mortality, and migration), and with population characteristi ...
*
Historical racial and ethnic demographics of the United States The Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, racial and ethnic demographics of the United States have changed dramatically throughout History of the United States, its history. Sources of data During the Colonial history of the United Stat ...
*
Historical religious demographics of the United States Religion in the United States began with the religions and spiritual practices of Native Americans. Later, religion also played a role in the founding of some colonies, as many colonists, such as the Puritans, came to escape religious perse ...
*
Mean center of U.S. population The mean center of the United States population is determined by the United States Census Bureau from the results of each national census. The Bureau defines it as follows: After moving roughly Boxing the compass, west by south during the ...
*
Rural exodus Rural flight (or rural exodus) is the migratory pattern of peoples from rural areas into urban areas. It is urbanization seen from the rural perspective. In industrializing economies like Britain in the eighteenth century or East Asia in the ...


References


Sources

* 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; the online version in Excel * Chadwick Bruce A. and Tim B. Heaton, eds. ''Statistical Handbook on the American Family.'' (1992) * Kennedy, Joseph C. G. ''Population of the United States in 1860'' (1864) official returns of 8th censu
complete text online
* 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)


Further reading

* Fogel, Robert W. "Nutrition and the decline in mortality since 1700: Some preliminary findings." in Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman, eds. ''Long-term factors in American economic growth'' (U of Chicago Press, 1986) pp 439–556. * Hacker, J. David. "A census-based count of the Civil War Dead." ''Civil War History'' (2011) 57# pp: 307-348

* Haines, Michael R. 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, 2012)
excerpt
* Lahey, Joanna N. "Birthing a Nation: The Effect of Fertility Control Access on the Nineteenth-Century Demographic Transition," ''Journal of Economic History,'' 74 (June 2014), 482–508. * Mintz Steven and Susan Kellogg. ''Domestic Revolutions: a Social History of American Family Life.'' (1988) * Smith, Daniel Scott. "The demographic history of colonial New England." ''The Journal of economic history'' 32.01 (1972): 165-183
Online
* Smith, Daniel Scott, and Michael S. Hindus. "Premarital pregnancy in America 1640-1971: An overview and interpretation." ''The Journal of interdisciplinary history'' 5.4 (1975): 537-570
in JSTOR
* Wells, Robert V. ''Revolutions in Americans' Lives: A Demographic Perspective on the History of Americans, Their Families, and Their Society'' (1982) * Wells, Robert V. ''Uncle Sam's Family'' (1985), general demographic history {{United States topics Articles containing video clips
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
History of the United States by topic