Population change exerts a significant impact on communities, families, and institutions. Demography is not destiny, but researchers and policymakers ignore it at their peril. At the Carsey School of Public Policy, we seek to delineate the population change underway in communities and to analyze the demographic forces that cause it, using the latest data. We also consider the consequences that demographic change has for the environment, communities, and families in both rural and urban areas. Our analysis of demographic change and the implications it has for a sustainable future for New Hampshire, New England, and the United States contributes to the informed policymaking needed to address the complex problems that population growth and decline produce.
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Professor of SociologySenior DemographerAndrew Carnegie FellowResearcher -
RESEARCH SCIENTIST II, Center for Social Policy in Practice, UNH Carsey SchoolEmail: tyrus.parker@unh.edu
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Senior Analyst, UNH Institutional Research
2018 Nordblom Fellow
Carsey FellowEmail: kristine.bundschuh@unh.edu -
Professor and Chair, Natural Resources, UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture
Carsey Senior FellowEmail: mjducey@unh.eduPhone: 603-862-4429 -
Professor, Sociology, Cornell University College of Human Ecology
Carsey Senior Fellow -
Professor, Sociology and Demography, University of Texas at San Antonio
Carsey Senior FellowEmail: Rogelio.Saenz@utsa.edu -
Professor, Political Science, UNH College of Liberal Arts
Carsey Senior FellowEmail: Dante.Scala@unh.eduPhone: (603) 862-1519
New Hampshire’s population reached 1,409,032 on July 1, 2024, an increase of 6,800 since July 2023, according to new Census Bureau estimates. The state’s population gain was larger than the prior year’s, but smaller than in the two preceding years. Learn more.
Demographic trends in rural America have been impacted by recent economic, social, and pandemic turbulence. The nonmetropolitan (rural) population grew between April of 2020 and July of 2023 because a large net migration gain offset the growing excess of deaths over births fostered by Covid-19. Learn more.
In 2022, there were 21.9 million women aged 20–39 who had not given birth in the United States. This is 4.7 million more childless women of prime child-bearing age than would have been expected given fertility patterns prior to the Great Recession, up from 2.1 million in 2016. Learn more
Highlights
The Daily Yonder: Racial and Ethnic Diversity of Rural Population Grows by Nearly 20%
The Daily Yonder: Racial and Ethnic Diversity of Rural Population Grows by Nearly 20%
Kenneth Johnson and Daniel Lichter
Article
Sun Belt cities boom as major cities bleed population
The Washington Post: A rural county in Iowa that supported Trump turns to Latinos to grow
The Washington Post: A rural county in Iowa that supported Trump turns to Latinos to grow
Ken Johnson
Article
Ken Johnson
Kenneth M. Johnson is senior demographer at the Carsey School of Public Policy and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. He is a nationally recognized expert on U.S. demographic trends. His research examines national and regional population redistribution, rural and urban demographic change, the growing racial diversity of the U.S. population, the relationship between demographic and environmental change and the implications of demographic change for public policy. LEARN MORE
