The Mean Population Center

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I live a mile or so past the northern boundary of West Plains, Missouri, a town of roughly 12,000 people and an area that is very white, very conservative, and fairly protestant.  Of the people who are politically aware and active in the area, about seventy percent vote Republican, and most of those regard Mike Pence as a liberal.

Therefore, I live in the central part of the United States, and the prevailing political wind is decidedly mean - which would, in a sense, make this the "mean center" of the United States.

Yesterday the US Census Bureau sent out an email which announced the new "mean center of population" in the US, and, would you believe it, that honor goes to a patch of woods about fifty miles (as the crow flies) east and a little north of my house.

The US Census Bureau describes the center of US population thusly:

"The Center of Population is a point at where an imaginary, flat, weightless, and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if everyone were of identical weight."

So, take one of those pyramid / fulcrum thingies, place a rigid sheet of paper on top of it, map out the United States - including Alaska and Hawaii, sprinkle on lightweight representations of all of the people living in the US, and it will balance when the fulcrum is directly beneath . . . a point in Wright County, Missouri, that is 14.6 miles northeast of Hartville!  (That is 11.8 miles west and a little south of the point where it balanced after the 2010 census - and it shows a continuing southwesterly dip that has been occurring for many years.  People are gradually moving toward the warmer climes of the American southwest.

After the first census of 1790, the mean center of population in the US was in Kent County, Maryland, approximately 23 miles east of Baltimore.   Over the ensuing two-hundred-and-thirty years it has moved 885.9 miles east and a little south to its present location in Wright County, Missouri.

The mean center of population crossed the Mississippi River from Illinois in 1980 and since that time had been in Missouri.  In 1980 it was located in Jefferson County, Missouri, 1990 in Crawford County, 2000 in Phelps County, 2010 in Texas County, and today in Wright County.  If the current trend continues, it is likely to remain in Missouri for the next twenty or thirty years before sliding into northwest Arkansas.

Puerto Rico, the most populous US territory and which is closer to the continental US than either Alaska or Hawaii, was not figured into the US census calculation for the mean center of the United States.  I have a theory that if that beautiful island territory was included in the Census Bureau's ciphering for the "mean population center," it would necessarily pull the it a bit to the south and east - toward Puerto Rico - and would very likely place it in my back yard somewhere between the house and the barn.  Best guess:  just inside chicken coop. 

Ralph and the boys would be so proud.

Life at Rock's Roost is almost always in balance!