Population growth follows economic growth

Michael Barone:

What parts of America have been growing during these years of sluggish economic growth?

Answers come from comparing the Census Bureau’s just-released estimates of metro-area populations in July 2012 with the results of the Census conducted in 2010.

The focus here is on the 51 metro areas with populations of more than 1 million where 55 percent of Americans live, most of them, of course, not in central cities but in suburbs and exurbs.

Two growth champs stick out — Austin and Raleigh. A half-century ago, neither of them amounted to much.

The counties now in metro Austin had 300,000 people in 1960. Those in metro Raleigh had 260,000. Now metro Austin is 1,834,000, and metro Raleigh is 1,188,000.


Austin’s population grew by 6.9 percent and Raleigh’s by 5.1 in 2010-12. That’s huge growth in just two years.

Both are high-tech centers with major universities. They had the biggest rate of domestic in-migration of any million-plus metro areas in 2010-2012. They both have reputations as cool cities. More important, they both have creative and vibrant private sector economies, fostered by relatively low tax rates and sensible regulation.

Raleigh’s taxes and cost of living compare favorably with those in most states in the Northeast. Austin is attracting a lot of people from California, where the top income tax rate is now 13.3 percent. Texas’s income tax rate is zero.

Next on the growth list are Texas’s three other million-plus metros, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, which grew by 4.3 percent in 2010-12.

Their populations grew by 622,000 people. That’s 12 percent of the entire nation’s population gain during that period. It’s more than metro New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Hartford and Providence combined. Texas is making a huge contribution to the nation’s demographic and economic growth.

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The big losers were Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo.   The rest of the country would be better off if it followed the Texas model.  The population of Austin in the mid 1060's when I was a student at UT was a little over 200,000.  I think it really took off with Dell computers which attracted a lot of high tech peripheral business to the area.  Willie Nelson also helped to attract a music scene that has grown beyond any expectations.  Austin is a very clean city.  The Austin San Antonio corridor has also grown dramatically.