About States Demographics
States Demographics is a reference to the people of the 50 states and DC: how many live in each state, how that is changing, and who they are, explained in plain language from the federal statistics.
What we cover
The site covers states only: all 50 and the District of Columbia, compared with the United States. We do not publish county, city or metro pages, because doing one level well matters more to us than covering every level thinly.
For each state we combine several primary sources: the Census Bureau's population estimates, decennial census and American Community Survey; the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics for births, deaths and life expectancy; the Bureau of Economic Analysis for income, output and prices; the Bureau of Labor Statistics for unemployment; IRS migration data; and the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Veterans Affairs for immigration and veterans. Religion, which no federal source covers, comes from the U.S. Religion Census, a count of congregations distributed by the Association of Religion Data Archives. The sources page lists every table.
How the pages are written
Each state page is written for that state, around what is distinctive in its numbers, rather than filled into a fixed template. Every figure in the text is pulled from our data files by its identifier, so the number on the page is always the one in the source table, and the source is footnoted. Statements about change or difference follow the Census Bureau's significance tests. The methodology sets out the rules.
Who it is for
Students and teachers who need a reliable figure with its source; journalists checking a number before publishing; researchers who want state-level data with margins of error in one place; and anyone comparing states before a move. Every page answers the most common question first, usually the population and how fast it is changing, and then goes into the detail.
Independence and corrections
The site carries no advertising and no sponsored content. It does not take positions on policy. If you find an error, please tell us; confirmed corrections are listed on the updates page.
Reusing the data
The underlying federal statistics are in the public domain; the religion figures from the U.S. Religion Census may be reused under the Association of Religion Data Archives' terms, with its citation. Our compiled data files are free to reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution license; see data downloads.