Census: U.S. population tops 308M

Erin Cox
The Capital
December 22, 2010

As sexy U.S. Census story lines go, Maryland's statistics read like National Geographic.

The broad results of a once-a-decade count were released yesterday, and Maryland remained squarely where it was: still eight seats in U.S. Congress, still the fifth highest population density and still the 19th most populous state in the country while growing at 9 percent over the past 10 years - a little slower than the national average of 9.7 percent.

But the new announcement is just the beginning of a process to more closely examine the state and Anne Arundel County as politicians will divide, dice and analyze the deluge of census data to be released over the next few months.

State leaders will decide how to redraw congressional and legislative boundaries while county officials will recreate council districts. The data will be used to annually divvy up more than $400 billion worth of federal aid across the country and classify more precisely who makes up the United States.

"All of you have helped us paint a picture of our country," U.S. Commerce Sec. Gary Locke said at a press conference announcing the results of the country's 23rd national census.

The process began in 1790, when each Congressional district contained 34,000 people and the geographical center of the country's population laid somewhere near Kent County. With today's recalculations of the country's population as 308,745,538 people, there are now about 710,767 people in each Congressional district and the population's geographic center lies somewhere near the Missouri - Arkansas border.

According to the bureau, as of April 1, 5,789,929 people live in Maryland, making the state one of 32 that will see its number of seats in congress remain the same.

The centuries long trend of the country's population moving south and west has continued, with some states in those areas gaining congressional seats and those in the northeast losing them.

Why, exactly? Census officials say the numbers are too new to draw any conclusions.

"We can't wait to get more into this and dive into the trends of migration," Robert M. Groves, director of U.S. Census Bureau, said.

Groves called the count "a critical step in our democracy."

More detailed information will be released in February and March on a state by state basis, allowing lawmakers, a curious public and demographers to pinpoint data down to a city block. In the mean time, census officials celebrated the broad conclusions drawn from the total count, which was presented to President Barack Obama earlier in the day.

Among those conclusions: the United States showed the slowest growth since the years after The Great Depression. Whether the economy played a major role or the U.S. has adopted the European trend of stabilizing populations in developed countries remains to be seen, Groves said.

"We'll never really be able to tease those things apart," he said.