The U.S. Census arrived Thursday and reminded everyone again just how much things can change in a decade.
Cincinnati's population grew for the first time in 70 years. The suburbs around the city in Ohio and Northern Kentucky grew, too, though not as much as in the past. And Hamilton County broke a 40-year population losing streak.
Those population increases, though modest in many cases, came during a decade that saw the overall U.S. population grow at its slowest rate since the 1930s, when the nation was suffering through the Great Depression.
Here are some of the big takeaways from the first release of 2020 Census data Thursday:
It's official: Cincinnati is growing
The last time Cincinnati could brag about a growing population, Elvis Presley had a hit with "Jailhouse Rock" and "The Ten Commandments" was playing at the local movie theater.
All that changed Thursday. Cincinnati's population edged up to 309,317 residents in the 2020 Census, a 4.2% increase over 2010 and the first increase of any kind since 1950.
That's still a far cry from the city's peak population of almost 504,000 in 1950, when Cincinnati was one of the 20 largest cities in the nation. Still, local leaders, including Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, hailed the Census figures as proof the city is making a comeback.
Annual federal estimates had shown a modest rise in the city's population for several years, so the news Thursday wasn't a shock. But the once-a-decade Census count made it official.
Hamilton County is growing, too
The largest of the 16-counties in the Cincinnati region also is growing again, albeit slowly, for the first time in 40 years.
To be sure, the growth was modest compared to surrounding counties and lagged the nation's growth of 7.4%, which was the worst since the Great Depression. The county's population remains 10% below its highest level ever of 924,018 people, an Enquirer analysis shows.
The county's rising population occurred during a decade when 52% of U.S. counties lost population. The big exceptions to the national trend, however, were large counties like Hamilton County with populations over 100,000. In those counties, population increased 9.1%.
"We see a strong relationship to population size, with small counties tending to lose population and more populous counties tending to gain people," said Marc Perry, a senior demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau.
Single-digit rise in some suburbs
While the suburban counties around Hamilton County continued to grow, none grew as much as they had in recent decades. Some of those counties saw single-digit percentage increases after years of double-digit growth.
Butler County, the largest of the suburban counties, grew 6% to 390,357 residents. Clermont County grew 5.7% to 208,601. In the previous seven decades, both counties had grown by double-digits in every Census.
In Northern Kentucky, Campbell and Kenton counties both posted gains, though not as significant as in previous years. Campbell's population increased by 3% to 93,076 and Kenton's by 5.9% to 169,064.
Covington, Northern Kentucky's largest city, grew for the first time in decades, but just barely. The city's population increased by just 0.13% to 40,691.
Warren, Boone counties outperform U.S.
The exceptions to single-digit population gains were Warren and Boone counties, though they, too, saw growth slow in 2020.
Warren County's population increased by 13.9% to 242,337 and Boone County's by 14.4% to 135,968. The growth in Boone County was the best in the 16-county Cincinnati region, though 2020 was the first time in seven decades the county didn't experience growth of more than 20%.
Warren County, still among the fastest-growing counties in Ohio, failed to attain a 20% population increase for the first time in eight decades.
Still, Warren County was only one of five in Ohio to add people faster than the national population growth rate of 7.4%. Out of Kentucky's 120 counties, Boone was among the 13 to top the national rate.
City remains minority-majority
Cincinnati's population has for years been nearly evenly divided between white and minority residents. The 2020 Census found much the same, with a few twists.
The city now has 160,785 minority residents and 148,532 non-Hispanic white residents. That's a split of 52%-48%.
But the Census found the city's Black population declined 5.7% since 2010. Local and national experts have said gentrification and revitalization in some city neighborhoods are partly responsible for the decline, along with the movement of middle- and upper-class Black residents to Cincinnati's outer suburbs.
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