Only eight of West Virginia’s 55 counties grew in population from 2022 to 2023. Most of these were clustered in the Eastern Panhandle and Potomac Highlands regions.
From July 2022 to July 2023, the vast majority of West Virginia counties experienced population decline.
Forty-seven of the state’s 55 counties decreased in population in the one-year span, according to data released by the United States Census Bureau last week.
But among the eight counties that saw growth, five are located in the Eastern Panhandle and Potomac Highlands region.
Berkeley County grew at a rate of 2.37 percent. Jefferson, Morgan, Hampshire, and Hardy counties also saw growth, clustering the greatest population increase in the easternmost region of the state.
In north central West Virginia, Monongalia and Marion counties also saw slight growth, with rates of 0.69 percent and 0.04 percent respectively.
The sole representative of southern West Virginia, Monroe County, grew its population by 0.5 percent in the one-year span.
Despite some regional growth, population decline across most counties echoes a years-long trend of population loss in West Virginia.
To view the full list of county-level population trends in West Virginia from 2022 to 2023, visit the Census Bureau website.
West Virginians who have not responded to the U.S. Census might have a field worker showing up on their doorstep within the next five weeks.
Census workers are following up with households across the country, including in West Virginia, that have not self-reported through the mail, online or by phone.
With about a month left to report, the response rate so far is 55.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2010, the final response rate in West Virginia was about 59 percent, making it 6 percent below the national average.
“It’s not dire straits by any means,” said Stephen Shope, U.S. Census Bureau supervisory partnership specialist. “They’re [West Virginia] getting ready to surpass their 2010 rate. But we still got to keep pushing on to get that complete.”
Census numbers, which are collected every 10 years, directly impact federal funding for the state. The count for 2020 will determine how much of the $675 billion federal funds will be given to the Mountain State.
“This data we live with for 10 years, so taking 10 minutes to respond, it’ll benefit your family or community or state for the next 10 years,” Shope said.
The money helps fund housing, transportation, health care, education and emergency response — programs that often lack finances in economically distressed areas, such as West Virginia.
An undercount of the population could also lead to losing a Representative in Congress. Currently West Virginia has three – David McKinley, Alex Mooney and Carol Miller.
The census count will end Sept. 30, a month sooner than previously planned. The Bureau cited the last-minute change as part of efforts to meet the statutory deadline of Dec. 31, 2020.
West Virginia has one of the country’s lowest participation rates in the 2020 census.
Data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau shows only about a third of West Virginia households have responded to the head count as of Thursday, putting the state as third worst behind only Alaska and Puerto Rico.
About a month into the census effort, the national response rate is about half of all households with Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan leading the pack with over 50% return rates.
Republican Gov. Jim Justice and other state officials have repeatedly urged residents to fill out the once-in-a-decade census forms.
“Federal funding to state and local communities, congressional representation, economic development grants, business recruitment, rural broadband investment, health centers, fire departments, Medicaid, highways, and a number of other programs depend on accurate counting of people within our state,” Secretary of State Mac Warner said.
The state will also use census data to redraw congressional and state legislative districts in 2021.
The Census Bureau’s suspension of field operations between mid-March and mid-April due to the spread of the new coronavirus may be affecting response rates. And besides causing the delay in field operations, the outbreak is keeping advocacy and civic groups from conducting face-to-face outreach, which is considered the most effective way of encouraging participation.
People can respond to the census online, by phone or by mail.
Berkeley County is one of the fastest growing counties in West Virginia. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2013 and 2016, the population grew by 4,300 people. It’s also the second most-populated county in the state.
With big businesses like Procter and Gamble moving in, it seems like the population will only continue to grow, so how does the county handle that?
West Virginia Public Broadcasting spoke with Sandy Hamilton, Executive Director of the Berkeley County Development Authority to talk about challenges in the growing region and her thoughts on the county’s overall impact on the state.
Biggest Challenges:
Building a dependable workforce
Keeping up with infrastructure needs
Impact:
Hamilton says she hopes Berkeley County’s growth “provides hope” for the rest of the state and for each area of West Virginia to focus and emphasize its strengths.
New federal data show 319,063 West Virginians living below the poverty line last year, a 17.9 percent rate unchanged from the year before and slightly lower than a measured peak in 2011.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey shows 88,351 children under 18 years old in poverty, or 24 percent of those living in West Virginia in 2016.
It had the fifth highest overall poverty rate among its 1.78 million people, behind the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and New Mexico.
Among those employed in West Virginia, the rate was 7.8 percent.
Sean O’Leary, of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, says state options to address the problem including protecting Medicaid and other programs low- and moderate-income families rely on and investing in higher education.
The number of people living in rural areas continues to slide, according to the latest population estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau. People have left rural America in decades past. The big difference now is that the number of births in rural areas isn’t keeping pace with the number of deaths.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The population in rural America (nonmetropolitan counties) has declined for a record-breaking sixth straight year, as we’ve previously reported. Geographer John Cromartie of the USDA Economic Research Service looks at the factors that go into population change at the county level. Rural areas aren’t losing population just because Americans are leaving the countryside and moving to the city. What’s different in the last six years is that there are more deaths than births in rural America, and the change in “natural increase” is a key factor in bringing down rural population overall. This article is condensed from Cromartie’s report just published in Amber Waves, the ERS publication.
Population growth rates in rural counties have been significantly lower than in urban (metro) counties since the mid-1990s, and the gap widened considerably in recent years. Between 2006 and 2016, annual rates of population change in rural areas fell from 0.7 percent to below zero, while urban rates fell only slightly from 1 to 0.8 percent.
Population Growth From Natural Change No Longer Offsetting Net Migration Loss
County population change includes two major components: natural change (births minus deaths) and net migration (in-migrants minus out-migrants). While natural change has gradually trended downward over time, net migration rates tend to fluctuate in response to economic conditions. Since 2010, the increase in rural population from natural change (270,000 more births than deaths) has not matched the decrease in population from net migration (462,000 more people moved out than moved in). Net migration rates were often much lower in the past—during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1980s—but were always offset by higher rates of natural change.
More Deaths Than Births Now Occurring in Hundreds of Rural Counties
Population growth from natural change (more births than deaths, also known as natural increase) was the norm historically. But declining birth rates, increasing mortality rates among working-age adults, and an aging population have led to the emergence of natural decrease (more deaths than births) in hundreds of U.S. counties, most of them rural counties. Lower rates of natural change resulted in 325 rural counties experiencing sustained natural decrease for the first time during 2010-16, adding to 645 rural counties with natural decrease during 2000-09.
Areas that recently began experiencing natural decrease are found in New England, northern Michigan, and high-poverty areas in the southern Coastal Plains. Such counties also are found in and around the margins of Appalachia, expanding a large region of natural decrease extending from Maine through northern Alabama.
Shifting Geography of Population Change
Opportunities for population growth and economic expansion vary widely from one rural county to the next. A comparison of maps for two time periods (2002-08 and 2010-16) shows that new regional patterns of growth and decline have emerged in recent years.
The first map shows geographic patterns of population growth that held sway for decades. Population loss affected most rural counties dependent on agriculture, in the Great Plains from eastern Montana to west Texas, extending into Corn Belt areas of Iowa, Illinois, and other Midwestern States. Population loss also affected areas of relatively high poverty in the southern Coastal Plains from eastern Texas to Virginia, and in Appalachia from eastern Kentucky through upstate New York.
Rapid population gains in rural counties near large and medium-sized metro areas reflected long-term suburbanization trends that transformed hundreds of rural areas and small towns. Rapid growth was also concentrated in recreation areas with attractive scenery and retirement destinations, such as throughout the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Coast regions, in the Ozarks and southern Appalachia, and in Florida.
The second map shows declining population trends and geographic shifts since 2010. In 2010-16, rural population decline occurred in 18 out of 23 eastern States that had been growing during 2002-08. Population growth also slowed considerably in the Mountain West for the first time in decades, affecting numerous counties in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and elsewhere. Overall, only 138 rural counties grew by 5 percent or more since 2010, compared with 429 counties prior to the Great Recession.
Spurred by an energy boom, large sections of the Great Plains turned around decades of population decline. This is most visible in sparsely settled regions such as the Williston Basin in western North Dakota and eastern Montana. However, the most recent year of data (2015-16) shows a significant reversal in population growth in these energy-sector regions, in line with recent cutbacks in oil production.
This first-ever period of overall rural population loss may be short-lived depending on the course of the economic recovery. The cyclical downturn in net migration that began in 2007 bottomed out in 2012, and improving population trends since 2012 coincide with a marked improvement in rural employment growth. Even if temporary, this small but historic shift to overall population loss highlights a growing demographic challenge facing many regions across rural and small-town America: population growth from natural increase is no longer large enough to counter cyclical net migration losses.
This story was originally produced by our publishing partner The Daily Yonder.
