Results tagged “population” from MHPC Blog

Another issue that folks have been following is the population race between Maine and New Hampshire.  Last year it appeared that New Hampshire's population would exceed Maine's sometime early in 2009.

The revised data shows that New Hampshire's population actually exceeded  Maine's in 2007.  The attached chart shows the growth in population for the two states since 1991 (click "continue reading" to view chart).  In 2007, Maine's population was 1,317,308 and New Hampshire's was 1,317,343.

Accelerated by Maine's recent population decline, the gap has grown to 6,274 people with Maine's population in 2009 at 1,318,301 to New Hampshire's 1,324,575.

Like Maine, New Hampshire also saw net out-migration in 2009 with 2,602 more folks leaving than coming into the state.  However, New Hampshire's net natural increase was significantly higher at 3,587.  Interestingly, this gap is due to a lower death rate with New Hampshire reporting 10,449 deaths to Maine's 12,894.

Also of interest is how quickly New Hampshire's population has grown since 1991 relative to Maine's.  Between 1991 to 2009, Maine's population grew by 85,582 people while New Hampshire grew by 212,191. 

As shown in my previous blog, Maine's population shrank for the first time in decades.  But what is the cause of this decline?

The first chart shows Maine's "net domestic migration" which is the net flow of folks to and from other states (click "continue reading" to view chart).  The chart shows that Maine has entered another period of net out-migration with 2,937 more people leaving than coming into the state.  The previous out-migration episode was in the early 1990s.

However, note that out-migration in the early 1990s was higher than it is today.  Why didn't total population shrink back then as well?

The answer lies in the rapid drop in the "net natural increase" which is the net change in births minus deaths as shown in the next chart.  In 1991, there were 5,873 more births than deaths.  By 2009, the natural increase had plunged to only 789.  The main cause of this decline was in births which fell from from 17,070 in 1991 to 13,683 in 2009.

As a result of lower natural increases, it takes smaller levels of net out-migration to cause drops in total population.  I warned about this problem when I blogged about the 2008 loss in population for 10 of Maine's counties--it is called demographic winter.  Now demographic winter has spread to the entire state.

While this is bad news, hopefully this will propel policy-makers to start taking demographic winter seriously.  There are no easy solutions to this problem--just ask Japan, eastern europe and Russia all of whom face more severe cases of demographic winter and have yet to defeat it.

Today the U.S. Department of Commerce's Census Bureau released new state population data for July 1, 2009 (previous years were also revised).

The data brings more bad news.  Maine's total population shrank by 1,390 people to 1,318,301 in 2009 from 1,319,691 in 2008 (click "continue reading" to view chart).  This is the first decrease in total population since the 1960s.

More blogs to follow in dissecting this disturbing drop in population.

A few months back, I blogged about the alarming fact that 10 of Maine's 16 counties have lost population.  I recently became aware of this new data from the U.S. Census Bureau which shows population change by town.  Unfortunately, the data reveals a dismal picture for Maine's towns.

Between July 1, 2007 and July 1, 2008, more than half (58 percent) of Maine's towns saw their population decline (click "continue reading" to view table)--310 out of 533 towns.  Additionally, these towns represented more than half of all of Maine's population (55 percent).  As such, this is not simply a reshuffling of Maine's population, but rather one of absolute population decline due to fewer births and out-migration (for more on out-migration, see here).