From Daily Kos:
[Last] week, the U.S. Census Bureau released new annual population estimates for the year between July 1, 2014 and July 1, 2015, and there are plenty of notable details. But the most important takeaway is the implications for the next round of congressional reapportionment that will follow the 2020 census. And using these new population totals, Election Data Services has updated their projections as to which states will gain and lose seats in the House.
[…]
There are only minor changes from EDS’s projections last year, when the firm predicted (albeit with less confidence) that California and Virginia would both gain seats. This time, interestingly, EDS says that whether you look at the longer-term from 2010 to 2015, or whether you use a shorter-term trend such as from 2013 to 2015 or just 2014 to 2015, all of their projections now come out the same way—something that wasn’t true a year ago.
Click over to see the table. I’ll spoil it for you and say that Texas is currently in line to pick up three more Congressional seats, which would boost our total to 39. That’s fueled by 1.82% population growth, or 490,036 new residents, over the period of July 1, 2014 to July 1, 2015; see here for the data. That link doesn’t go into further detail, but I’m sure a lot of that growth is fueled by children and non-citizens, who some people think shouldn’t be counted for purposes of apportioning legislative districts. But they sure do count when it comes to doling out new ones.
Actually one of the tables does give the breakdown. For Texas, it was 398,000 births, 182,000 deaths, 102,000 foreign immigrants and 170,000 arrivals from other states. Curiously, though it was far and away the greatest total increase among states, it did not lead in any one of these categories (2nd to California in births and natural increase, 3rd after California & Florida in deaths, 2nd to Florida in migration from other states and total immigration, 4th after California, New York & Florida in foreign immigration. Texas’ secret for growth is balance in all sectors, which no other among the four largest states have. California and New York are hemorrhaging migrants to other states, & Florida has a very low birth rate and very high death rate (goes with specializing in retirees, I imagine).
Gary,
The ‘texas miracle’ is no secret.
No state can replicate our economy.
It’s geographically impossible.
*geologically
Alas, this probably means three more tea-baggers in the House.
I was trying to give the components of Texas’ growth, not the “causes.” However, while it is clear that migration, both interstate and international, testifies to the state’s economic vitality, the natural increase involves other factors — including the fact that the state’s Latino population has a lot to do with both the high birth rate and low death rate (it’s much younger, on average, than the Anglo — which is true all over the US but more important in Texas). California has a pretty dynamic economy as well as Texas; but it seems to be running out of room to pack more people, whereas the capacity of Texas’ metros to sprawl seems unlimited by nature. If we want to start talking about the effect of political climate on economic and population growth, however, we might note that before California became so crowded (in the non-mountainous areas near the coast), it outgrew Texas both in population and economic vitality for over a hundred years, despite having had by Texas’ Republican standards positively socialistic state and city governments. Even today, Texas has nothing remotely to compare with the economic engine of Silicon Valley, or the network of superior colleges and universities that provide the manpower for the awesome tech giants. As to the geology, we are presently engaged in a real-life experiment to find out whether the state’s enormous growth can survive dirt-low oil and gas prices.
Sweet! I hope the Texas Lege gerrymanders them all into East Texas so we can add 3 more Louie Gohmerts.
No,
I meant to say geographically.
But we can say geoligically as well.
But oil-gas is not the reason for the “texas miracle”.
Actually the miracle is a myth.