The
Census Bureau says Atlanta is
the nation's fastest-growing city (by numerical growth), and St. George, Utah, is
the fastest growing (by percentage).
To nobody's surprise, Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans lost the most
population in the last six years. All five top population gainers were in the
South or West. And those regions had almost all of the 50 fastest-growing metro areas -- 23 in the West and 25 in the South.
Click
here to get an Excel spreadsheet of population estimates for the top 100 metro
areas in America.
Click here for the
PDF
version of the spreadsheet.
10 U.S. Metro Areas With Highest
Numerical Growth:
(April 1, 2000-July 1, 2006)
1.) Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga. -- 890,211
2.) Dallas-Fort
Worth-Arlington, Texas -- 842,449
3.) Houston-Sugar
Land-Baytown, Texas -- 824,547
4.) Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz. -- 787,306
5.) Riverside-San
Bernardino-Ontario, Calif. -- 771,314
6.) Los
Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, Calif. -- 584,510
7.) New
York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island -- 495,154
8.) Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C. -- 494,220
9.) Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach, Fla. -- 455,869
10.) Chicago-Naperville-Joliet,
Ill.-Ind.-Wis. -- 407,133
10 Fastest-Growing U.S. Metro Areas:
(April 1, 2000- July
1, 2006)
1.) St. George, Utah -- 39.8%
2.) Greeley, Colo. -- 31.0%
3.) Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla. -- 29.6%
4.) Bend, Ore. -- 29.3%
5.) Las
Vegas-Paradise, Nev. -- 29.2%
6.) Provo-Orem, Utah -- 25.9%
7.) Naples-Marco Island, Fla. -- 25.2%
8.) Raleigh-Cary, N.C. -- 24.8%
9.) Gainesville, Ga. -- 24.4%
10.) Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz. -- 24.2%
Biggest
population losses included these:
- The
New Orleans metro area experienced the greatest numeric
loss from April 1, 2000, to July 1, 2006, declining 292,000 since 2000 to 1 million on July 1, 2006.
- It
was followed by Pittsburgh (a loss of 60,000) and Cleveland (a loss of 34,000).
-
The New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, La., metro area also had the
biggest percentage loss during the same time period at 22.2 percent.
- It
was followed by Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss. (a loss of 7.4 percent), and Weirton-Steubenville, W.Va.-Ohio (a loss of 5.2 percent).
Get more data here.
Al's Morning Multimedia
Here is another example of how non-news Web sites are
giving voice to the everyday person online. Pewsitter.com
is a site for Catholics to report anything from "good news" to reports of
abuse in the church. The site links to tons of stories from mostly traditional
news sites.
Also, here is a list of 81 "citizen journalism" Web sites for you to sample.
Foreclosures Affecting Housing Market
In
Dallas, there are so many homes in foreclosure that they are driving down the
housing market. Realtors say market comps, which are the prices buyers and
appraisers use to evaluate a home's worth, are driven down by fire-sale prices
on foreclosure properties.
Really
Big Increase in Really Big People
The RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research institution, says its new
study shows that since 2000, there has been a big increase in the number of
Americans who are 100 or more pounds overweight. From 2000 to 2005, the
percentage of Americans 100 or more pounds overweight increased by 50 percent.
The
study finds no evidence that bariatric surgery has slowed the trend toward morbid obesity.
It reports:
The prevalence of severe
obesity continues to surge despite a rapid increase in the use of bariatric
procedures, which are surgeries that limit the amount of food patients can eat.
The number of bariatric surgeries increased from an estimated 13,000 in 1998 to
more than 100,000 in 2003. Experts estimate that as many as 200,000 of the
procedures were performed in 2006.
Why It's Harder to Get into College
Costs
aside, it has never been more difficult to get into the best colleges. Even
solid (if not spectacular) students today frequently apply to a dozen schools
hoping to get accepted by somebody. There are so many
applications per student that it adds to the competition.
The
New York Times says:
Harvard turned down 1,100
student applicants with perfect 800 scores on the SAT math exam. Yale rejected
several applicants with perfect 2400 scores on the three-part SAT, and Princeton
turned away thousands of high school applicants with 4.0 grade point averages.
Needless to say, high school valedictorians were a dime a dozen.
And
it will not get easier anytime soon. Fifteen percent of colleges reject more than half of
all applications, according to the National Association for College
Admission Counseling. Those very selective schools also get 28 percent of
the total applications.
The
Washington Post explains:
Parents of younger children tell each other it will get better
when the current bulge of baby-boomer children gets out of high school at the
end of this decade, but they are wrong. The latest data show that if anything,
the frantic competition to get into the most selective colleges is only going
to get worse.
The U.S. Education Department's National
Center for Education Statistics
says the number of graduating high school seniors will peak at 3.3 million in
2011 and decline only slightly to 3.2 million by 2016. Most educators predict
that the percentage of those students going to college -- now about 67 percent
-- will increase and make the application process even more stressful. Undergraduate
enrollment, for instance, is projected conservatively to increase from 15.2
million this year to 16.6 million in 2015, the center says.
The number of high
school graduates has increased every year since 1996 as the children of the
huge, post-World War II baby-boom generation passed through. During the same
time, college applications soared as the economy increasingly rewarded higher
education. Federal data in 2004 showed male college graduates earning 67
percent more and female graduates 68 percent more than those with only a high
school diploma.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
