By:Walter C. Odom, Jr.
I will share today some of the key results from the high-stakes 2020 US Decennial Census.
If you pull out a dusty copy of the U.S. Constitution (or look at it online at www.https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/full -text), you will find that before establishing the national defense or postal service, running a national census every 10 years is the first responsibility set forth for the federal government in Article 1, Sect
ion 2 of the Constitution. The following are a few key results from the 2020 US Census April 26, 2021, apportionment data release that you may find interesting:
-- The resident population of the USA on April 1, 2021, was 331,449,281 an increase of 22,703,743 or 7.4 percent more than in 2010.
-- The most populous state was California (39,538,223); the least populous was Wyoming (576,652).
-- The state that gained the most people since the 2010 census was Texas (up 3,999,944 to 29,145,505).
--The fastest-growing state since the 2010 census was Utah (up 18.4 percent to 3,271,616).
--Puerto Rico's resident population was 3,285,874, down 11.8 percent from the 2010 census.
These original census numbers are used for the apportionment of the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to the states. The apportionment results demonstrated a further shift of the nation's population southward and westward. Texas will gain two seats in the House of Representatives; five states will gain one seat each (Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon); seven states will lose one seat each (California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia); and the remaining state's number of seats will not change.
The reapportioned Congress will be the 118th Congress, which will convene in January 2023.
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