Suburbia is back, latest census figures reveal

The Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, but it has taken more than five years for the U.S. to return to its postwar pattern of suburban growth.

However, the economic downturn’s impact on delaying births continues to linger and may affect population growth for decades to come.

New U.S. Census Bureau population estimates for July 1, 2014, released Thursday show a record number of deaths in the previous year, reflecting the aging of the U.S. population. By the smallest margin in 35 years, births barely outnumbered deaths.

“With few births and many deaths, more than 1,000 U.S. counties [out of 3,144] had more people die in them than be born,” said Kenneth Johnson, the senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute. “I keep expecting births to go up, but they don’t.”

Migration trends are starting to revert to prerecession norms, with more people leaving cities for suburban counties — a pattern that came to a halt after the housing bust in the latter half of the last decade. Still, large urban cores are losing fewer people to the suburbs than at the peak of the pre-2007 economic boom or during the heyday of suburban expansion.

“I’ve been waiting now several years in a row for some signs that there’s been movement to the suburbs,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “That’s turned around, not in a huge way, but it’s turned around.”

The population estimates for counties and metropolitan areas show that suburban fringe counties in large metropolitan areas grew by 768,000 since July 1, 2013, to 78.4 million.

“This suggests that the recession’s effect on migration is finally beginning to wane,” said Johnson, who analyzed the data.

“All of the Northern metros, for the most part, are showing bigger outmigration this year than last year,” Frey said. “They’re not bleeding migrants like they were the first part of 2000s, but it’s moving back in that direction.”

David Goldberg, a vice president at Smart Growth America, a coalition that advocates for less sprawl, is not surprised that growth is once again picking up on the fringe of cities.

Even in suburbia, “the places that are really drawing people seem to be downtowns of one sort or another,” he said.

Goldberg said there is growing evidence that a majority of employers may not want to be in traditional central business districts but want to be in suburban downtowns or new urban center developments.

“It’s undeniable that there is an urban ethos amongst educated millennials that employers and developers and others have picked up on,” Goldberg said.

The Washington, D.C., metro area, for example, which experienced a surge in population in the last few years, had almost 25,000 more people leave than move in from July 2013 to July 2014. But in suburban areas such as Fairfax County in Virginia, “urban” centers with good subway access have sprouted.

Rural America continued to lose population. Some locales bordering metro areas had enjoyed a rebound as housing construction spread out, but many of these experienced the steepest decline during the real estate crisis.

One thing is clear: Florida has bounced back from a lull in migration during the recession and is showing big gains in the southern and central parts of the state.

Six Florida metro areas were among the 20 fastest growing in the nation from July 2013 to July 2014: the Villages, Cape Coral–Fort Myers, Naples–Immokalee–Marco Island, Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, North Port–Sarasota–Bradenton and Panama City.

Sumter County, the third-fastest-growing county in the nation, is home to the Villages, a retirement community.

Florida surpassed New York last year as the third-most-populous state. People moving from other states and other countries account for 78 percent of the state’s growth — many of them retirees.

Ten of 16 metropolitan areas that had more deaths than births are in Florida.

“The birth numbers have been pretty stable over the last couple of years, but the number of deaths are increasing,” said Stefan Rayer, the director of the population studies program at the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

Many of the counties that have attracted retirees have a higher proportion of non-Hispanic whites than other parts of the state, also contributing to a lower birthrate, he said.

As baby boomers age (the oldest turn 69 this year), the death rate will go up, he said.

But the influx of people has helped the state regain its average annual growth of 300,000 people.

The census estimates show that Americans’ love affair with the sunny climes of the South and West continues, but they’re now flocking more to interior areas — Charlotte, North Carolina; Las Vegas; Atlanta; Phoenix; and Nashville, Tennessee. In Arizona the Tucson metro area surpassed the 1 million population mark.

Texas continues to flourish in a big way. Two metro areas in the state — Houston and Dallas — were the only ones in the U.S. to add more than 100,000 residents. In the Houston metro, Harris County alone gained almost 89,000 people — more than any other county in the nation. Texas also boasts four of the country’s 20 fastest-growing metros (Austin, Odessa, Midland and Houston), as well as three of the fastest-growing large counties.

North Dakota’s booming oil business continues to fuel its growth. Its Williams and Stark counties had the highest percentage gains in population.

Los Angeles remains the most populous county, with more than 10.1 million people. Wayne County, Michigan, home of financially troubled Detroit, had the largest population loss: 11,000 people.