If demography is destiny, good news for Texas, North Dakota and D.C.

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

Demographics buffs get a special Christmas present every year courtesy of the Census Bureau: its annual estimates of the populations of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

This gives demographers a chance to see where the nation is growing and where it is not, and to get an idea of the destination of immigrants and of the flow of people into one set of states and out of another.

Nationally the Census Bureau estimates that the United States has grown from 308 million people when the census was conducted in April 2010 and to almost 313 million in July 2012, for a rate of about 1.7 percent. If that continues through the decade, the nation's population will rise at a lower rate but by a larger number in this decade than it did in 2000 to 2010.

The fastest growth in the last two years has been in two small enclaves -- the District of Columbia (5.1 percent), thanks to the federal government and gentrification, and North Dakota (4.0 percent), thanks to the Bakken shale oil boom.

Neither is up to 700,000 people yet, though North Dakota, after nearly a century in the 600,000s, is almost there.