A Guide to the Fifth District
Demographics and Economy

Population growth has been stronger in the Fifth District than in the United States as a whole since 1980. But many rural areas have seen population decline over the last twenty-five years.

North Carolina is the most heavily populated state in the Fifth District and the 11th most populous state in the nation. The state’s population grew by 45 percent from 1980 to 2004, the quickest pace in the District. Population growth in Virginia has also been strong; a brisk 40 percent during that period.

In contrast, the population of West Virginia is lower today than it was in 1980. West Virginia’s population fell sharply in the 1980s and has grown only modestly since. Several of the District’s cities, including Baltimore, Md., and the District of Columbia, also experienced population declines between 1980 and 2004.

Population growth rates by county for the more recent period of April 2000 to July 2004 are depicted in Map 1. Growth has been particularly strong in Northern Virginia; in excess of 20 percent in several counties during the period. The population of Loudoun County in Northern Virginia grew by an extraordinary 41 percent from April 2000 to July 2004, the strongest rate in the nation. In contrast, many rural counties in the Fifth District, including over half of those in West Virginia, have lost population since 2000.

There are also some noteworthy differences among the states in the distribution of ages within their population. The median age of the population of West Virginia, for example, is 40 years, among the highest in the nation. As of July 2004, 15.3 percent of the people in West Virginia were 65 years of age or over; only Florida had a larger percentage of people in that age category.

As might be expected, West Virginia also has a relatively low proportion of younger people in its population. Only 21.2 percent of the population was under 18 years of age in 2004. But the District of Columbia had an even smaller proportion of the population under 18 years of age; 19.8 percent, the lowest in the country. The proportion of the population under 5 years of age in the District of Columbia and in West Virginia was below the national average as well.

Most of the people in the Fifth District reside in Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, however, and the distributions of ages in these states differ little from the U.S. averages. The median age of the population in these states is close to the U.S. median of 36 years.

Table 2
Population by Age Groups-July 2004
(Percent of Population)

Source: U.S. Census Bureau