Story at a glance
- While the U.S. population is increasing, the number of kids and teens in the country is dwindling.
- Some states haven’t seen their younger populations decline as much as others, however — and in some, those populations are actually growing.
- In Texas and Florida, which have seen the largest bumps, this is largely due to a boom of newcomers.
Even as the number of children and teenagers falls across the United States, an influx of both domestic and foreign migrants is swelling the younger populations of Texas and Florida.
The ranks of Americans under 20 are declining due to a falling birth rate and a shrinking pool of women in their childbearing years, as the nation as a whole grows older.
But the change in the young population has varied across different states, and some have bucked the broader trend and seen their numbers of child and teen residents increase in recent years.
Chief among that group are Texas and Florida, which experienced the biggest bumps in their under-20 populations between 2020 and 2022, according to Census data.
In that time, Florida saw a net increase of 42,370 kids and teens, while Texas’s number of young residents rose by 18,245, according to census data analysis by Brookings Institution demographer William Frey.
In total, 10 states had upticks in their child and teen populations between 2020 and 2022, with a collective gain of 97,881 young people.
But a significant majority of that growth — 62 percent — was concentrated in Texas and Florida.
So why is the younger population growing so much in these two states, despite declining nationally?
Americans are moving to Texas and Florida in droves.
The biggest driver of this trend is increased migration to the Lone Star and Sunshine states.
Both Texas and Florida have welcomed an influx of newcomers since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, in part due to the normalization of remote work that has allowed many Americans to move to more affordable cities without having to change jobs.
Texas experienced the largest numeric change in its population out of all 50 states last year, according to a December Census report, adding 473,453 residents.
Florida, meanwhile, saw both the second biggest change in the nation and the second fastest growth behind South Carolina: The Sunshine State’s population expanded by 1.6 percent last year, marking an increase of 365,205 people.
Florida also earned the top spot for highest population growth in 2022, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors.
In that year, Florida’s domestic net migration — a figure that describes the number of people who moved there from other parts of the country minus the number who moved away to other states — totaled 318,855, resulting in 1.9 percent population growth.
And the typical newcomer to Texas and Florida is relatively young, meaning that many either have young children or are in their childbearing years.
This is especially true for Texas, which is the third youngest state in the nation, according to Helen You, associate director of the Texas Demographic Center.
The median age of a Texan in 2022 was 35.6 years old, Census data show.
“Texas and Florida really stand out,” said Rogelio Saenz, a sociology and demography professor at the University of Texas San Antonio, in an email to The Hill.
He stressed the significance of newcomers in boosting the states’ young populations — noting not only migration from within the U.S., but also from outside of it.
“Without domestic and international migration, the number of persons 0-19 would be smaller or may have declined,” he said.
Immigrants are arriving in both states.
International migration has also contributed to the growing number of children and teenagers in Texas and Florida, both of which have a long history serving as hubs for immigrant communities.
California, Texas and Florida are home to 45 percent of the country’s immigrants, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study.
That has remained true into 2022, according to a breakdown of Census data from Saenz.
In 2019, California was home to at least 10.6 million immigrants, while more than 4 million each lived in Texas and Florida, according to the Pew study.
Immigrants contribute significantly to the country’s young population as a result of their relative youth, according to Frey.
“Nationally, immigration is kind of the key to growth in the younger populus,” Frey told The Hill.
This isn’t because most immigrants are children or teenagers themselves, he said, but rather because they tend to be “in the younger adult ages so they have children when they come here.”
Texas has a relatively high birth rate
Nationally, fertility is declining in the U.S.: The number of births dropped from 14.3 per 1,000 people in 2007 to 11.1 by 2022.
But birth rates vary by state, with some parts of the country seeing higher figures than others.
While the birth rate in Texas has been dropping, it hasn’t been doing so as quickly as in other states, which has contributed to the growth in the Lone Star State’s younger population, according to You.
In 2021, the national birth rate was 56.3 births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2023 National Vital Statistics report.
Texas saw a rate of 60.7 births per 1,000 women in that age group the same year.
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