Ga. swells to 9th on list of big states, Census says

By J. FRANK LYNCH
jflynch@theCitizenNews.com

Georgia has added nearly a half million new residents just in the first three years of the new millennium, moving past New Jersey into 9th on the list of the country’s most populous states, the Census bureau announced last week.

According to the annual July 1 Census estimate of population for all 50 states and Puerto Rico, Georgia was home to 8,684,715 people midway through 2003.

That’s 498,262 people more than were shown living in the Peach State in the official 2000 Census, when 8,186,453 Georgians were counted, and reflects an annual increase of about 2 percent per year. At that rate, Georgia’s population will pass the 9 million mark in 2005.

County and city 2003 population estimates were not included in this report, but will be released in early spring.

Nationwide, Georgia was the 4th-fastest growing state from July 1, 2002 to July 1 this year, a period which saw the nation’s population surge to 290 million, or a rate of 1.0 percent.

Even at that slow rate of growth, the number of people in the United States could pass the 300 million mark by 2007. Officials noted the strong growth even as the nations economy still struggles to come out of a deep recession, but said more than half (55 percent) of the population growth between 2002 and 2003 resulted from natural increase, with the remaining 45 percent coming from net international migration.

Among the nation’s 10 fastest-growing states were four in the Rocky Mountains: Nevada (ranking first for the 17th consecutive year with a growth rate of 3.4 percent), Arizona (second), Idaho (fifth) and Utah (eighth). The remaining top 10 states were all coastal: Florida (third), Texas (fourth), Georgia (sixth), Delaware (seventh), California (ninth) and Hawaii (10th).

States that moved into the top 10 this year were Delaware, California and Hawaii.

The South now accounts for 36 percent of the nation’s total population, with the West comprising 23 percent, the Midwest 22 percent and the Northeast 19 percent.

California remained the most populous state in the nation with 35.5 million people in 2003. The second and third most populous states were Texas (22.1 million) and New York (19.2 million).

Georgias move up to 9th on the ranking of the 10 most populous states was the only change in that order.

The population estimate for Puerto Rico for July 1, 2003, was 3.9 million, up about 19,000 since July 1, 2002. Puerto Rico’s rate of increase was 0.5 percent.