Talk:Demographic history of the United States

Removal of old intro
The article used to say:

"As a typical colonial foundation, British North American provinces often developed cities relatively early in their histories."

Well, Egypt developed cities pretty early in its history, too. Some Native American civilizations also had huge cities. I'm not sure the implied claim is either factual or neutral. -- Beland 00:58, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I find it hard to believe there is any implication about a lack of cities in non-British North American provinces in the original statement. -- brianski Sun Nov 6 03:10:02 2005 UTC

NPOV, balance and comprehensiveness
This article seems to be mainly citing rural/urban demographics from a particular source, in support of the concept of "rural exodus". Instead of selecting certain states to support a point, this article should contain across-the-board statistics, which should be obtainable from the US Census.

To live up to the promises of its title, this article should be expanded to cover more than just rural/urban issues, even though that's an interesting starting place. -- Beland 01:05, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

AFRICAN AND CARRIBEAN IMMIGRATION TO THE USA
This article lends the assumption that ALL African Americans date their arrival to the Colonial Period.That couldn't be further from the truth. There has been immigration from Africa over time, and - even more important - significant immigration from the Carribean. SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) (talk) 13:56, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Missing data
There is no discussion and almost no data at all of the period between 1850 and 1940. Gohome00 (talk) 16:25, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

1610 & 1620 + lack of definition of population figures
The article supplies extremely different population numbers for these dates. Difficult to believe that European population 3 years after Jamestown was settled was 3800. In fact later it is given as 400.

Neither set of statistics defines the population base used - though apparently Native Americans are excluded at first. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.66.139.197 (talk) 00:30, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

No data on Native Americans
There is almost no data on Native Americans, the article is very eurocentric. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.106.183.2 (talk) 04:14, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I added the sentence "Note that the census numbers do not include American Indian natives until 1860." below the table in sections "Historical population" and "Immigration - Natural Growth". In my opinion, it's important to emphasize that there were more than 350 people in the area of today's U.S.A. in 1610 - of course the native American Indians did not take part in the census, which may be self-evident to many, but Indian natives are clearly neglected that way - Heironymous Rowe deleted the sentence without explanation. What do you think? -- Kuhni74 (talk) 09:05, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 * WP:CITE and WP:VERIFY, same as all other information added to articles. And, yes, I did leave an explanation in the edit summary. Get your facts straight.If you can cite it, re-add it.  He  iro 09:17, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I did not understand the abbreviated hints. Much of the information can be found in Historical racial and ethnic demographics of the United States, which is referred to in the section "See also". A direct source is Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990..., I am going to add it. -- Kuhni74 (talk) 14:30, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Fertility rate
The graph of birth rate is quite interesting - not just for the Baby boom, but for what happened before that. What was that little downtick in 1919? (WWI, 1918 Flu pandemic, ?). What are the origins of the steep decline from 1916 to 1932 (both what caused it, and how was it achieved). There is the small baby boom after WWII, but why the huge bulge after that?

Should expand the demographic history to cover fertility rate, demographic transition, etc. Here is one source with a little earlier data.

Use of contraceptives increased throughout the nineteenth century, contributing to a 50 percent drop in the fertility rate in the United States between 1800 and 1900, particularly in urban regions.

(From Birth control movement in the United States). Zodon (talk) 05:45, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * suggestions: for 1919 I think it was 4 million young men away in the Army in 1918. (the flu effect was possible too) and in 1946 the WW2 soldiers returned home for good. "birth control" is the term for the decline in family size--it includes later marriage and reduced sex; "contraceptive" = mechanical (rubber) devices which is more problematical since we lack sales or usage data. Rjensen (talk) 07:02, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Found an answer for '20 to '30. The birth rate in America declined 20 percent between 1920 and 1930, primarily due to increased use of birth control.
 * WW2 accounts for the spike in 1946, but there is the whole rest of that bulge which comes after that. Zodon (talk) 08:23, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

{Historical Population} box too long
The box is longer than any fish. Could anyone please make it into two boxes, one for 1610~1780 and the other for 1790~2010? :P I don't know how ...

Also, should we include some projections, up to ~2100? I saw some figures on the Chinese page of this, but I'm not sure about its reference. SzMithrandir (talk) 19:43, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Population in 1790
This section needs the footnotes to be put properly under the table, instead of being right in the middle of the article. 108.254.160.23 (talk) 17:53, 22 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I've had a go at this. There were also some obscurities in this section that I have either removed or tried to clarify. It looked previously as if it might have been cut and pasted from some other work. Thomas Peardew (talk) 17:43, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

19th century "black majority" states
I came to this article looking for facts about the southern states that had black majorities in the years leading up to the Civil War — notably, South Carolina, the first state to secede. The enslaved majority in several of the slave states was an important fact of life. IIRC all the black-majority states seceded, while the slave states that remained in the Union (Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri) had both white majorities and relatively large free black populations. I'm disappointed to find that this article is still silent about all this. — ℜ ob C. alias ALAROB 16:01, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Demographic history of the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20140528010531/http://www.census.gov:80/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/006105.html to http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/006105.html

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Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 03:18, 30 August 2015 (UTC)