What Census Data Says About America’s Changing Counties

County-level data released this year by the Census Bureau paints a picture of a United States that is changing in unprecedented ways.

The United States has long been an anomaly among developed nations. A younger population and significantly higher birth rate than other economically advanced countries, as well as a greater receptivity to immigration, helped the United States grow dramatically over the last six decades. In 1960, the U.S. population stood at just over 179 million. In the most recent Census Bureau estimate as of July 2025, it had reached nearly 342 million, an increase of almost 163 million.

In that period of time, the country has also become much more diverse. In 1960, more than 8 in 10 people in the United States were white. Most of the non-white population was Black. By 2025, Census Bureau data showed that the white population of the country had dropped to just 56 percent. Latinos and Asians, who combined were just 6 percent of the population in 1960, made up 28 percent of America’s population in 2025.

But data from the Census Bureau suggests several longstanding demographic patterns could be shifting in profound fashion. As the country ages and birth rates fall, a large percentage of counties now see no or minimal growth from births. At the same time, much more restrictive immigration policies could see the country experience net negative immigration for the first time since the Great Depression, impacting what had been, until now, an increasingly important source of population growth for many counties.

Conversely, other demographic trends like the nation’s growing racial diversity may be speeding up as older, whiter generational cohorts begin to leave the scene, portending rapid demographic changes in coming years.

As these trends converge, their impact will change the landscape in counties, large and small, throughout the country.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. counties now have more deaths than births.

The most recent census data shows that almost two-thirds of U.S. counties — 2,055 of 3,144 — had more deaths than births between July 2024 and July 2025. Around half of the 2,055 counties grew overall but only because population losses from having more deaths than births were offset by domestic in-migration from other parts of the United States and/or immigration. The other half of the 2,055 counties saw overall population declines.

Most counties with more deaths than births were in long depopulating rural areas, but a growing number of larger urban counties — including St. Louis County, Missouri, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (home to Pittsburgh), Onondaga County, New York (Syracuse), and Cuyahoga County, Ohio (Cleveland) — also now regularly see more people die than be born each year.

Trend lines suggest other large urban counties are likely to soon join the list of counties with more deaths than births. For example, Orleans Parish in Louisiana, whose boundaries coincide with the city limits of New Orleans, had just 32 more births than deaths in the one-year period ending July 1, 2025. Likewise, Multnomah County, Oregon, home to Portland, had only 223 more births than deaths in that period.

This pattern is a striking change from the first decade of the 21st century. Between 2000 and 2010, just 872 of the nation’s counties (28 percent) had more deaths than births. Moreover, back then, the few counties where deaths outpaced births (i.e., negative natural increase) had a clear archetype: They were by and large either counties with sizeable retiree communities or in economically challenged regions like Appalachia and the Great Plains.

The increase in the number of counties with more deaths than births will likely accelerate in coming years. The median age in the United States is now 40.7 for women and 38.1 for men, with three-quarters of counties having a median age at that level or higher. By comparison, in 2000, the median age was 36.5 for women and 34 for men. Two decades before that, in 1980, the median age was 31.3 for women and 28.9 for men.

Moreover, not only are Americans getting older, for more than two decades, they have been having fewer and fewer children on average, a trend that has accelerated in the years since the Great Recession. The exact reasons for this multi-decade decline are still not fully understood, but the trend is broad, persistent, and present across racial and ethnic groups.

Almost 7 in 10 counties have shrinking white populations.

Since the 2020 census, the white population of the United States has fallen by 3.2 million, a decline of nearly 2 percentage points. These declines have been broadly spread out across the country, affecting counties large and small. All told, 2,091 of the nation’s 3,144 counties — or 67 percent — have seen a white population drop since 2020. By contrast, only 54 percent of counties saw their white population fall between 2000 and 2010.

The largest decreases were in the Northeast, where 84 percent of counties have seen their white population decline since the 2020 census. However, a majority of counties in every region of the country saw their white populations fall in this period. This includes 57 percent of counties in the fast-growing and demographically diversifying South, the site of many recent battles over electoral maps and voting rights.

This trend is unlikely to be transitory. While younger generational cohorts are highly diverse, white Americans make up the overwhelming share of the older generations like the Baby Boomers. As the large Boomer cohort increasingly leaves the scene, declines in white population are likely to only accelerate.

By contrast, just 23 percent of counties in the United States have seen their Black populations decline this decade. Likewise, Asian and Latino populations have grown just about everywhere — only 5 percent of counties showed a decline in Asian population and just 3 percent a fall in their Latino population since the last census.

Some of these declines are profound, however — especially for Black Americans. Both Los Angeles County in California and Cook County in Illinois have seen their Black population fall by 7 percent between 2020 and 2025, largely as a result of out-migration. Kings County, New York (Brooklyn), likewise, has seen its Black population drop by 9 percent in that period. All three counties were prime locations for Black Americans leaving the South during the Great Migration. Now, they are losing Black population to other parts of the country, both to nearby suburbs and to the South in a reverse Great Migration.

Indeed, 6 of the 10 counties that have seen the largest increases in Black population this decade are in Texas and all but two are in the South. Black population is growing at an especially fast pace in the suburbs of states like Texas. For example, Collin County, outside of Dallas, and Fort Bend County, outside of Houston — two of the fastest-growing counties in the United States — have seen their Black populations grow by 35 percent and 23 percent this decade respectively.

Explore this decade’s county-level changes in race and ethnicity using the Brennan Center’s interactive tool:

Immigration was the largest driver of population change in more than a third of counties.

 Since the 2020 census, immigration has been the largest component of population growth in 36 percent of all U.S. counties.

The list of counties where immigration is now the largest contributor to growth includes long popular first stops for immigrants like Los Angeles County, California and New York City, both of which have also had large and well-publicized outflows of residents this decade. However, a number of urban counties in the boom states of the South — like Fulton County, Georgia (Atlanta), Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (Charlotte), and Harris County, Texas (Houston) — now, too, derive a greater share of their growth from immigration than from either domestic migration or natural increase.

Also on the list are suburban and exurban counties like Santa Clara, California and Gwinnett County, Georgia, as well as rural counties in places as demographically different as the Great Plains and the Black Belt of Alabama. Indeed, in much of rural America, immigration now is doing all of the work in sustaining the population of counties.

But these trends may not continue. The Trump administration has sharply curtailed immigration for what is likely to be the foreseeable future. The impacts could be profound.

Without immigration, nearly 300 counties with positive population growth this decade would instead have experienced population losses. These include counties as varied as Miami-Dade County, Florida, DeKalb County, Georgia (suburban Atlanta), Hennepin County, Minnesota (Minneapolis), Westchester County, New York (suburban New York City), Salt Lake County, Utah, and King County, Washington (Seattle) as well as the District of Columbia.

Other counties that lost population would have seen even more pronounced population declines without the offsetting benefits of immigration. This decade, for example, Los Angeles County lost 279,571 people but would have lost 602,051 people without new arrivals from outside the United States.

By contrast, natural increase (births minus deaths) was the largest driver of population growth in only 7 percent of counties.

Latinos represent the largest component of population growth in nearly three-quarters of U.S. counties.

Since the last census, Latinos have accounted for 78 percent of the population growth of the United States, seeing their numbers grow by nearly 8 million people, or 13 percent. This growth is playing out in dramatic fashion at the county level. In 2,231 counties — nearly three-quarters of all American counties — Latinos have grown more in raw numbers than any other ethnic group since 2020.

Latinos notably account for 61 percent of the growth this decade in the South, the country’s fastest-growing region. Altogether, two in three southern counties (918 of 1,394) saw more population growth from Latinos than any other group. This number includes both large urban counties like Harris County, Texas, which has added 287,371 Latinos this decade — more than any county in the country — and smaller rural counties like Lowndes County, Alabama, which has seen both its white and Black populations fall this decade by sizeable numbers.

But while Latinos in recent years have been key to helping counties grow, or not shrink so much, this trend may not last. Between 2020 and 2025, a little over half of all Latino population growth in the United States has come from immigration. However, immigration levels are falling precipitously with the implementation of more restrictive policies. In the one-year period ending July 2025, immigration fell by half from the prior year to just 1.3 million. That number is expected to fall further to just 321,000 this year.

Slowing Latino population growth will bring big changes in many parts of the country. Areas with low rates of natural increase and high rates of domestic out-migration, like New York City and Los Angeles, could start to see overall population declines. Many other areas — urban, rural, and suburban — will similarly be impacted. Even areas that continue to grow may not do so robustly.

Asians are a key driver of population change, especially in the suburbs of the South.

Although the growth of the country’s Latino population is a key part of this decade’s demographic story, Asian populations also have grown significantly since the last census.

Since 2020, the Asian population of the United States has grown by 2.9 million, an increase of 14.4 percent that makes Asians the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country on a percentage basis.

Asian population growth in the country has been especially pronounced in Sunbelt states like Georgia and Texas, which have seen their Asian populations grow by 25 and 31 percent respectively this decade. Indeed, at current growth rates, Texas is on track to overtake New York by 2030 as the state with the country’s second-largest Asian population.

Much of this extraordinary growth is taking place in the suburbs of the boom states of the South. In Texas, for example, Collin and Denton counties, affluent suburban counties north of Dallas, have both seen their Asian populations grow by two-thirds this decade. In Collin County — which has added more people than all but two U.S. counties this decade — Asians accounted for 45 percent of that growth. Meanwhile, in Denton County, the fourth-fastest growing county in the country, Asians have been responsible for 38 percent of growth since 2020.

Perhaps inevitably, these counties have also emerged as hotspots for xenophobia and religion-based attacks aimed at these fast-growing communities.

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Demographic change has been a constant for the United States since its founding. But county-level census data suggests that the changes ahead may be some of the most sweeping in the nation’s history. 

Not only are deaths increasingly outnumbering births in a broad swath of the country, but the falloff in immigration for the foreseeable future has set the stage for unprecedented population declines in many of the counties of the United States. 

At the same time, the country is also set to become much more racially and ethnically diverse — and at a faster pace than recent decades — as the white population begins to decrease in absolute terms in counties, large and small, in every region of the country.

The impacts are almost certain to be profound and will likely increasingly challenge, and roil, the country’s politics as it enters the second quarter of the 21st century.