The Numbers Behind America's Population Shift

There are not too many days when I can go out on my front step and pick up two newspapers with articles by me in them. Today was one of those days. Here's my Creators Syndicate column, as published in the Washington Times. Basic thesis: Our politicians are champing at the bit to do something about global warming, despite the fact that we don't know with any precision what the likely bad effects are, while they (Republicans as well as Democrats) are determined not to do anything about Social Security, though we know with unusual precision what the bad effects are.

And here's my article on the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal article, "The Realignment of America." It's based on an examination of the 2000 census results and the 2006 Census Bureau estimates of the population of metropolitan areas, with special attention to the census figures showing "net internal migration," which I refer to as domestic inflow or domestic outflow, and "immigration migration," which I refer to as immigrant inflow (actually, there's a microscopic immigrant outflow in one metro area, Norfolk, which I suspect has something to do with the large number of military installations there). I divide the 50 metro areas with more than 1 million population (in 2006) into four categories: Coastal Megalopolises, with big domestic outflow and big immigrant inflow; Interior Boomtowns, with big domestic inflow and smaller but significant immigrant inflow; Rust Belt, with small domestic outflow and negligible immigrant inflow; and Static Cities, with little domestic inflow or outflow and small immigrant inflow. Two metro areas fit into none of these categories: New Orleans and Salt Lake City.

I've been asked to provide the underlying data. Here it is; please notify me if I have made any mistakes in my arithmetic (sometimes I tote up these numbers late at night). The numbers are as follows: 2006 population, 2000 population, percentage growth 2000-06, natural increase (number of births minus number of deaths) as percentage of 2000 population, domestic inflow or outflow, domestic inflow or outflow as percentage of 2000 population, immigrant inflow, immigrant inflow as percentage of 2000 population. The minus and plus figures after 0.5 indicate whether you should round these up or down if you want to express the percentages as integers.

I also calculated the percentages for George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004 for each of these metro areas and totaled up the groups. Here, to make things easier, I round off the election results to the nearest thousand, so the numbers reported here are slightly off-but almost never enough to make a difference in whole percentages for Bush or Kerry. The figures below show the Bush vote total, the Bush percentage, the Kerry vote total, the Kerry percentage and the total number of votes cast. The numbers let you see some interesting things. The Static Cities as a whole went 52 percent for Kerry. But almost all of the popular vote margin for Kerry came in the largest of those cities, Philadelphia. Among the others it was a wash.

A Couple of Small Items

Here's an E-mail exchange between me and Jeb Babbin. And, as a follow-up to my blogpost on the French elections, here, for those political junkies who would like to know which communes were bellwethers and which voted 100 percent for one of the candidates in the French election, it's all here in Figaro.