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Southern Comfort: Americans Still Feel the Lure of the Sun Belt

Southern Comfort: Americans Still Feel the Lure of the Sun Belt

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Warmer weather, lower prices and more living space might be reasons why Americans are moving south and staying there.

Cities and counties in the southern and western regions of the U.S. saw the largest population growth in the past year, according to newly released Census data.

“One interesting trend we are seeing this year is that metro areas not among the most populous are ranked in the top 10 for population growth,” said Sandra Johnson, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division.

Southern Comfort: Americans Still Feel the Lure of the Sun Belt

The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area saw the biggest uptick in the number of residents, adding 131,767 people from July 2017 to July 2018. That’s roughly equivalent to absorbing the entire population of New Haven, Connecticut.

The Phoenix area was second-highest with an increase of 96,268 people in the period, followed by Houston.

New York-Newark-Jersey City, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, the most populous metropolitan areas in 2018, all shrank from a year earlier. Between 2010 and 2018, more than half (52.9 percent) of all U.S. counties lost population.

Southern Comfort: Americans Still Feel the Lure of the Sun Belt

In the Dallas area, natural increases -- births minus deaths -- contributed the most to population growth, whereas domestic migration was the largest source of growth in Phoenix. Houston, Atlanta and Orlando rounded out the top five metro areas with the highest numeric growth.

Population growth on a county level shows a similar geographic trend, with Arizona’s Maricopa County in the top spot adding 81,244 more people in the year. Nevada’s Clark County and two counties in Texas -- Harris County and Collin County -- followed.

Out of 3,142 counties, slightly more than half showed positive net migration in 2018, meaning more people moved into the county than moved out.

Southern Comfort: Americans Still Feel the Lure of the Sun Belt

Of the ten fastest-growing counties, all experienced positive domestic migration.

International migrants settled in heavy concentrations along the “Acela corridor” from Boston to Washington, and in Florida.

Southern Comfort: Americans Still Feel the Lure of the Sun Belt

--With assistance from Cedric Sam, Alex McIntyre, Mathieu Benhamou and Yue Qiu.

To contact the reporter on this story: Shelly Hagan in New York at shagan9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Tanzi at atanzi@bloomberg.net, Ben Holland

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