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.
The opioid crisis has had a significant impact on mortality trends in both rural and urban areas and as such is a critical policy concern in New Hampshire, New England and the United States. Learn more.
The media treat rural and urban voting patterns as a dichotomy, but Carsey research shows that voting in rural America occurs along a continuum that is influenced by numerous demographic, regional, and economic forces. Learn more.
A recent Andrew Carnegie Fellowship supports Senior Demographer Ken Johnson research on how the Great Recession continues to influence fertility and migration patterns in both rural and urban America long after economists declared the recession was over. 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
