Census shows slowing U.S. growth

Census shows slowing U.S. growthBy Haya El Nasser, Gregory Korte and Paul Overberg, USA TODAYIt's official: The U.S. population is 308,745,538.The first results of the April 1, 2010, Census count unveiled Tuesday reveal a nation that has been transformed by the recession and the housing bust.

The USA grew 9.7% since 2000, the slowest rate since the Great Depression. Some of the once booming parts of the Sun Belt are not exploding anymore, but the region still leads the nation in growth — factors that will alter the balance of power in Congress.

"It's still a lot of people for a developed country," says Robert Lang, demographer and planner at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. "We came close to the Census Bureau's projections and estimates. We are still on track for 400 million by the 2040s."

Seats in the House of Representatives are reallocated to states every 10 years based on the Census population count. Twelve seats will shift, affecting 18 states.

Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington each will gain one seat, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves announced. Florida will gain two and Texas four. Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania will lose one seat each. Ohio and New York each will lose two.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican who rose to national prominence in a state where his party accounts for just 1-in-5 registered voters, said he anticipates a fight as congressional districts are redrawn following the census.

Christie's support helped Republican U.S. Representative-elect Jon Runyan defeat Democratic incumbent John Adler in November, giving the party control of the House in January.

"It's going to be intensely partisan because someone's going to have to lose a seat," Christie said. "Whenever someone's ox is getting gored it becomes intensely personal."

California, where growth slowed to 10% this past decade from 14% in the 1990s, will not gain a seat for the first time since it became a state in 1850, but it remains the most populous state with 37 million.

Texas is the big winner. It gained more people than any other state for the first time, outpacing California, which had dominated for almost a century. Texas' four new seats will give it 36, still behind California's 53.

New York's loss of two seats and Florida's gain of two will give each state 27.

"Texas has avoided much of the mortgage meltdown and recession that have plagued most of the rest of the Sun Belt and also benefited demographically from (Hurricane) Katrina-related migration from Louisiana," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution.

"The lowest growth since the Depression indicates the impact that lowered immigration has on our population growth and what it will mean in the future," he says. "New York continues to lose multiple seats for the seventh straight Census. Florida eked out a second seat despite its failing housing market of the last two years."

Michigan lost population for the first time since the 1980s, down about 55,000 people to 9.9 million.

"Despite some sparks of growth in the 1990s, the Rust Belt continues to decline, losing both people and political power," Lang says.

The fact that California has not gained a seat and nearby states such as Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Washington gained "shows a spreading out of its residents to more affordable parts of the West," Frey says. "California may be becoming the New York of the West."

The 10-year redistribution of House seats is about more than horse-race politics, says Richard Bensel, a political scientist at Cornell University in New York.

The 2010 census continues a long-term shift in political power away from the Rust Belt and toward the Sun Belt. That will have a noticeable impact on labor, and economic policies, he says.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sought to play down the possibility that 2010 census results would be a boon for Republicans.

"I don't think shifting some seats from one area of the country to another necessarily marks a concern that you can't make a politically potent argument in those new places," he said.

Contributing: Associated Press

State rank based on population since 1980:

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