Methodology
To identify the counties that shrunk the most in the last year, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed population change data from the U.S. Census Bureau. We ranked all U.S. counties and county equivalents – including Washington, D.C. – on the percent change in residents from July 1, 2020 to July 1, 2021.
The components of population change are net migration – the number of people who move to a given county less the number of people who move out – and natural population change, meaning the number of births in a given county less the number of deaths.
Due to margins of error in the census estimates, the raw population change number is close to, but not precisely equal to, the sum of net migration and natural population change.
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