Coastal Population Trends
Podcast Script:
Coastal Population TrendsHurricane Data and Emergency Preparedness
Megan Kindelan interviews Marc Perry, chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau, on coastal population trends as hurricane season begins. Stay tuned for future estimates/projections from the Census Bureau on populations that could be affected as tropical systems approach.
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Time: (6:14)
MARC PERRY: My name is Marc Perry. I am a demographer in the population division. I am chief of the population distribution branch. I have been at Census nearly 10 years now. And my office, as our name implies, we sort of analyze population distribution trends in the country. We look at the areas that are growing or declining, analyze sort of population movement, both state-to-state, and sort of regionally, and within areas.
MS. KINDELAN: Can you talk to us a little bit about the population trends in the coastal areas?
MR. PERRY: Actually, the number of people who live in a coastal county – and that is any county nationwide that has more than 15 percent of its land area in a coastal cataloging unit, essentially coastal drainage – the number of Americans in a coastal county recently passed the 150 million mark, so it’s about 53 percent of all Americans live in what we would consider a coastal county.
MS. KINDELAN: And how is this data used for emergency planning purposes, especially with the start of hurricane season?
MR. PERRY: One of the first things that you would need to know in any emergency situation is what is the impacted population? Who lives there? What are their characteristics, et cetera? So each year, the Census Bureau does updated population estimates for all 3,100 counties nationwide, of which the coastal counties are part of that. And we update our numbers each year based on new information on births, deaths, and migration.
MS. KINDELAN: For local emergency planning officials and also for residents who are living in those areas, what resources does the Census Bureau offer via the website, and where can people go to find that information?
MR. PERRY: Well, certainly on our website under the population estimates link on the site, we have information for every state, county, metropolitan area, city and town, a wide variety of population estimates, tables, and also some maps and other graphics that are updated each year with the new information that is available.
In addition, the American Community Survey is increasingly becoming just an incredible resource of new and very detailed information each year. And certainly, in the next several years, ACS is going to be a data source for a wide variety of geographic areas as more information is available for smaller and smaller units.
MS. KINDELAN: Can you talk a little bit about how you work with NOAA and other government agencies with the start of hurricane season approaching?
MR. PERRY: It’s a close relationship. We worked with NOAA years ago to actually come up with a definition of coastal counties, and worked with them to agree on what constituted coastal or non-coastal. And each year, we generally get in contact with NOAA to give them updated population data for all of the coastal counties.
MS. KINDELAN: And for those living in hurricane-prone areas, do you see this trend continuing of more and more people choosing to live in coastal areas? Give us the forecast for the future of where you see these trends going.
MR. PERRY: The interesting thing is that the share of the U.S. population in coastal areas has actually been pretty constant for decades now. It’s about 53 percent of all people are in coastal counties. And the growth rate for coastal and non-coastal is about the same. But what is very interesting is that it’s the population density in coastal areas that is certainly one of the bigger issues. And we find that coastal areas are over five times as dense as non-coastal areas. And in some parts of the country, particularly say south Florida, for instance, population densities are very, very high. So it’s not really that coastal areas are growing faster.
The interesting thing is that they actually are even continuing to grow at all, because they already have so many people in there to begin with. And essentially, it’s a very limited amount of land area that continues to add population year after year after year. And what’s important to note is that coastal areas don’t just have a permanent population, but they have a seasonal and a weekly and even a daily population as well. So the dynamics of the coastal population are very interesting for these reasons.
One of the statistics that we read and hear about pretty often is what percentage of Americans live within 50 miles of the coastline. And this was something that, over the past year, we decided to actually use Census 2000 data to calculate ourselves. And what we found was that 137.5 million people, which is 48.9 percent of the U.S. population, lived within 50 miles of the coastline as of Census 2000. This is the first time that we’re aware of that the Census Bureau has actually calculated the statistic. And it does vary fairly substantially from some of the other numbers that we have heard bandied about in the press and elsewhere, so it is just under half of Americans live within 50 miles of the coast.
Much of the data that you hear about coastal areas is for what we’ve been talking about as coastal counties. And certainly one of the issues is that there are some coastal counties in the U.S. that are very large and extend very far inland. And a good example of this is San Bernadino County, California, which extends right to the Nevada border. It’s a coastal county, but much of its land area is really, really far from the coast, and certainly not what one would consider when they’re talking about coastal. So if we just limit it to within 50 miles of the coastline, what we found as of when we were looking at Census 2000 data was that there were 137.5 million people – and that’s 48.9 percent of the U.S. population – lived within just this 50-mile zone of the coast. That statistic, that 48.9 percent figure, is a bit different from some of the numbers that we have been hearing in the press bandied about when often times you hear two-thirds of the U.S. population, or three-fourths, or figures like that. And those actually are not correct.
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