Census: State now more diverse

Decade saw decline in white population, in line with trends

The white population in Connecticut declined precipitously over the last 10 years as the state grew more diverse, Census data released Thursday shows.

Though white residents still make up nearly three-quarters of the state, their numbers dropped by 10 percent in the last decade. At the same time, the Hispanic population surged by 30 percent and the Asian population climbed by 27 percent, while the Black population rose by 8 percent.

Overall, however, the state’s total population barely nudged upward in the last decade growing by less than 1 percent, the smallest gain of any state in the Northeast and the fourth smallest nationwide.

The state’s increasingly diverse makeup and its relatively slow growth are likely due to a white population that is growing older and having fewer children, said Mark Abraham, executive director at DataHaven, a nonprofit data cooperative.

“There's been a huge drop in the number of white children in Connecticut in the past 10 years,” he said.”It's mainly just because the demographics have shifted.”

Given that Asian, Hispanic and Latino populations are younger and are expected to continue having children, Abraham said the trend should continue.

More than half of all Connecticut towns, ranging from large to small, lost population, with the largest proportional decline found in the small town of Canaan, which had 12 percent fewer residents than in 2010. Its losses were almost all white residents. Somers, about ten times Canaan’s size, also saw a decline of 10 percent, mostly due to declines in the white population.

Stamford saw the largest population growth of any town at 10 percent over the decade, attributable entirely to increases among

non-white residents. Hispanic and Latino populations grew by 30 percent in Stamford, accounting for two-thirds of the town’s overall growth. The number of multiracial, Asian and Black people also increased by smaller increments, while the white population declined.

The Census Bureau is constitutionally required to count every person living in the United States every 10 years, and the results have major consequences. Roughly $1.5 trillion in federal funds are allocated based on the counts, according to research from George Washington University. Each state also redraws its voting district lines using the data released Thursday afternoon.

State Rep. Gregg Haddad, D-Mansfield, cochairs the bipartisan committee of Connecticut legislators in charge of redrawing the maps and said he expected the new census data would “necessitate big changes.”

“Some districts might move quite a lot in terms of their shape and size,” Haddad said, adding that he expected to see significant growth in Fairfield County, the area closest to New York City.

Census data released Thursday confirmed the voting-age population in Fairfield County grew by about 8 percent during the last 10 years, representing

nearly half of Connecticut’s meager growth. New London, Tolland and Windham counties barely changed in voting-age population at all.

Following the statewide trend, the population growth in Fairfield County was fueled by Hispanic and Latino residents and people who identified with more than one race. The white population there declined by roughly 20,000 people.

Each voting district should ideally be home to equal numbers of adults. In the case of the state’s five Congressional districts, that translates to about 574,000 individuals apiece.

At the national level, the U.S. grew by just 7.4 percent over the past decade, the slowest rate since the 1930s. Less than half of the nation’s 3,143 counties, or county equivalents, gained population from 2010 to 2020, Census Bureau said.

“Many counties within metro areas saw growth, especially those in the south and west. However, as we’ve been seeing in our annual population estimates, our nation is growing slower than it used to,” said Marc Perry, a senior demographer at the Census Bureau. “This decline is evident at the local level where around 52% of the counties in the United States saw their 2020 Census populations decrease from their 2010 Census populations.”

At the same time, the country grew more diverse,

with the white population shrinking for the first time since census measurements began in 1790.

The Census Bureau, highlighting one measure of diversity it calculates, said that "the chance that two people chosen at random will be from different racial or ethnic groups has increased to 61.1% in 2020 from 54.9% in 2010."

Demographers expected that the new data released Thursday would show a nation that is growing older and has increasing populations of Hispanic, Black, Asian, American Indian, Pacific Islander and other racial and ethnic groups.

"Among children and young adults, we're going to see what we tend to call a 'majority minority' country," said Jennifer L. Van Hook, professor of sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University. "More than half of them are going to be nonwhite, and that's the future."

Indeed, the growing diversity at the national level was fueled by increases in Asian and Hispanic populations. It also included large spikes in the multiracial population as well as the number of people who identified themselves as being of a race other than the options available on census surveys. The number of people selecting "some other race" on census forms more than doubled and now comprises about 15

percent of the country's population, surpassing the Black population as the second-largest group behind white people.

In Connecticut, Census data showed the number of people who identified with more than one race — or “some other race” — also shot up.

The Bureau said it believed the surge in people identifying as "some other race" was largely due to changes it made to the design of the two separate questions for race and ethnicity as well as data processing and coding tweaks.

“As the country has grown, we have continued to evolve in how we measure the race and ethnicity of the people who live here,” said Nicholas Jones, director and senior advisor for race and ethnicity research and outreach at the Census Bureau. “The improvements we made to the 2020 Census yield a more accurate portrait of how people self-identify in response to two separate questions on Hispanic origin and race, revealing that the U.S. population is much more multiracial and more diverse than what we measured in the past.”

The 2020 count was beset by challenges, from COVID-19 to hurricanes to political attempts to change the census procedures. Beth Jarosz, a senior research associate at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit demography organization, called it "the hardest census the

U.S. has ever had to do."

These difficulties mean there is even more risk than usual that some populations may not have been fully counted by the census, whereas other groups could be over-represented.

Michelle Riordan-Nold, executive director of the Connecticut Data Collaborative, said more of the census was conducted virtually in 2020 than in decades past, due to COVID-19 restrictions. She worried that portions of the population weren’t reached when censustakers had to pivot, such as Spanish-speakers and people without computers or an internet connection.

“I question how effective we were in getting the word out, given everybody had to all of a sudden go into lockdown,” she said.

When the census wrapped up its collection efforts in October, the agency said it was able to count 99.8 percent of all residents.