The 1970 United States census, conducted by the

Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, 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 U.S. Census Bureau is part of the U ...

, determined the resident population of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

to be 203,392,031, an increase of 13.4 percent over the 179,323,175 persons enumerated during the 1960 census. This was the first census since 1820 in which

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

was not the most populous state

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

overtook it in population in January 1963. This was also the first census in which all states recorded a population of over 300,000, and the first in which a city in the geographic South

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

recorded a population of over 1 million. Population change recorded by the 1970 Census by State

Accurate racial census data was required by both the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...

and the

Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights move ...

, and the 1970 Census changed to identify race on the basis of self-identification rather than by government census enumerators. Virtually all of the key items from the 1960 census were retained.

Data availability

Microdata from the 1970 census are freely available through the

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series IPUMS, originally the ''Integrated Public Use Microdata Series'', is the world's largest individual-level population database. IPUMS consists of microdata samples from United States ''(IPUMS-USA)'' and international ''(IPUMS-International)'' cens ...

Aggregate data Aggregate data is high-level data which is acquired by combining individual-level data. For instance, the output of an industry is an aggregate of the firms’ individual outputs within that industry. Aggregate data are applied in statistics, d ...

for small areas, together with electronic boundary files, can be downloaded from the

National Historical Geographic Information System The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) is a historical GIS project to create and freely disseminate a database incorporating all available aggregate United States Census, census information for the United States between Uni ...

. These data were originally created and disseminated by DUALabs. Personally identifiable information will be available in 2042.

State rankings

City rankings

Locations of 50 most populous cities

Conclusions

California took over as the most populous state; New York had previously been ranked number one. While the entire country increased to more than 204 million persons, four states lost population, with West Virginia leading the list, down roughly 7 percent from 1960.http://www.upi.com/Audio/Year_in_Review/Events-of-1970/Apollo-13/12303235577467-2/#title "1970 Year in Review, UPI.com". Accessed April 8, 2009.
Archived
May 4, 2009.

Notes

External links

1971 U.S Census Report, with estimated 1970 Census results

{{Authority control

Census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

United States census