GENERAL
What Does Census Mean?
A census is an official count of an entire population. The word comes from Latin - specifically from censere, meaning "to assess" or "to estimate." According to...
Author
Dave Rogan
Dave Rogan covers population shifts, income trends, and housing data across American cities and metro areas, with a focus on the Census numbers that don't make headlines but probably should. David resides in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina.
10 stories
BOOMTOWNS
How Texas's Population Has Changed Since 1990
Texas added more residents in 2024 than any other state in the country. It has done so in most years since 1990. The current Texas...
GENERAL
Before You Move to Nashville: What the Census Data Says
Nashville has been one of the most talked-about relocation destinations in America for the past decade. The no-income-tax pitch, the music culture, the relative affordability compared to coastal cities - it all adds up to a compelling story. But the Census data tells a more complicated version of that story, one that includes a poverty rate that stays stubbornly above...
BOOMTOWNS
What the Census Data Reveals About Midtown Atlanta as One of the Densest Spots in the Southeast
Atlanta has a reputation for sprawl, and most of the metro earns it. The region covers more than 8,300 square miles, with a metro density of just 630 residents per square mile, which puts it among the most spread-out large metros in the country. But Midtown Atlanta, the two-mile stretch of high-rises, walkable streets, and dense residential towers running along Peachtree Street between North Avenue and 17th Street, operates by completely different rules...
GENERAL
The Most Extreme Census Tracts in America
Most tracts are unremarkable in the statistical sense - middle of the distribution on income, density, poverty, home values. But the ones at the extremes tell stories that city-level or county-level data can never surface. A tract with 44,000 residents. A neighborhood where the median home value exceeds $2 million. A block where 0% of residents live in poverty. These places exist...
BOOMTOWNS
Why So Many People Migrated to the Sunbelt
Between July 2020 and July 2024, the South gained 2,685,000 net domestic migrants, according to Hamilton Zanze's analysis of Census Bureau data. That is not a rounding error. It is the largest sustained regional population shift in modern American history, and...
TIME-MACHINE
How Dallas-Fort Worth Added 4.5 Million People in 35 Years
In 1990, the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area had just under 4 million residents. Today it has 8.5 million. That's not a typo, and it's not a story about one fast decade followed by a plateau. The Dallas metro has added people in every single decade since 1990, at a pace that has no real parallel among large American metros...
METHODS
Exploring America by Census Tract - What the Map and Rankings Reveal
The Census Bureau divides the entire United States into 84,000 small statistical neighborhoods called census tracts. Each one covers roughly 1,200 to 8,000 residents, which is close enough to a real neighborhood that the data actually tells you something meaningful about a specific place, not just a city average that smooths over everything interesting. CensusEasy indexes all of them, and we built two tools specifically for people who want to explore the country at that level...
BOOMTOWNS
The Best Places to Retire Based on Income, Climate, and Cost
Retirement location decisions come down to three things for most people: how far their money goes, what the weather feels like day to day, and whether the place actually works for someone who isn't commuting to an office anymore. The Census data makes it possible to look...
BOOMTOWNS
How Frisco, Texas became the fastest-growing city in America
In 1990, Frisco was a small farming town north of Dallas with about 6,500 people. Thirty years later it had 200,000. By 2024 it was closing in on 235,000, and the city is still building. No city in modern American history has sustained that kind of growth for that long...