Have you ever wondered how the population of the United States changed over the years? Perhaps you have wondered what it would look like if you could visualize the United States as it developed and the population ventured into new frontiers.
Maybe the thought has never crossed your mind, but either way, I recently wondered if you could see the population perfectly follow the states west and I decided to try my best to represent the United State’s population shift over time.
I decided to make a video to demonstrate this change in population. The video was also somewhat an experiment that tested a new method of making videos which eased the process enough to make this complex video possible. Instead of using my old method, which was to draw an image for each frame, I built an app using the programming skills that I started learning 10 years ago. Now all I have to do to make a video is input the images of the states that I drew and the population data (or other data) and then the app will animate the video frame by frame at 60 frames per second, compared to my hand-drawn videos at 1 frame per second.
Here is my video of the US population since 1776. Each state is highlighted in a color that corresponds to its population; the darker the color, the more populous the state is.
Notice that New York became the most populous state shortly after the United States won its independence; the state held this title for more than 150 years, if you remember from my post discussing the most populous states. In the 1960s, California suddenly experienced a drastic increase in population, which caused California to overtake New York, after which New York slowly faded from the most populous state to the 4th most populous state as Texas and Florida also surpassed New York.
To my surprise, almost every new state began its statehood with an extremely low population, but I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise, since each territory petitioned for statehood shortly after it reached the minimum population required to petition for statehood, which is usually around 60,000 people.
Another interesting phenomenon that I noticed was that many of the newest states, particularly the ones along the Rocky Mountains, entered the Union with a low population, and while they did increase in total population, they remained some of the least populous states. I don’t entirely know why that is the case. It is possible that it is simply because they are still new states, but I think it is probably because their landscapes are much more rugged than most states’ landscapes, which could also be why they were some of the last states to be admitted.
It is interesting to see how some of the states grew with time, such as Nevada. Nevada gained land two times since it became a state. Speaking of Nevada, today, October 31, 2024, is the day that Nevada turns 160 years old. Happy Birthday Nevada!
Watching the population slowly increase as the years go by in a video doesn’t entirely convey the rate at which the population increased, therefore, I have made a graph to depict the rate of population increase more clearly.
The population seems to have level off in the middle of the graph, from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. I suppose this could be explained by a number of things, but my guess is that the biggest contributing factor is the Great Depression, which lasted in the United States from 1929 to 1941.
Are there any interesting patterns that you discovered about the US population?
Onward American 