TDC in the News

According to U.S. Census estimates released in May, Tyler officially reached a population of more than 100, 000. Its 2013 population estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau is 100,223 - a 3.4 percent increase from the city's population of 96,900 in 2010.

The census designation made the milestone official, but independent studies placed Tyler in the 100,000 category years ago.

A 2005 estimate from an independent study showed Tyler had already reached the milestone, and was able to move its extraterritorial jurisdiction from three miles to five miles. The Texas State Data Center also estimated Tyler reached the 100,000 milestone in 2012.

We take a lot of pride in the Texas work ethic, from the Oil Patch to corner offices. And when companies relocate or expand here, they often tout the willing workforce.

Our job growth leads the nation, adding a record 441,000 jobs in the last year.

So it's surprising to learn that a shrinking share of Texans are working and looking for work — the smallest share, in fact, in almost 40 years.

An Austin political consultant worried recently about the city handling more growth.

Lynda Rife, campaign manager for a group that unsuccessfully sought voter approval of a rail-and-roads proposition, said afterward she hopes transportation issues can still be fixed. She told the Austin Monitor: "110 people will move here tomorrow, and the next day and the next day. I'm hoping that someone is thinking about some kind of solutions."

We were curious whether 110 people a day move to Austin.

In an article posted on Prognosis Wednesday, Arthur Garson, the director of the Texas Medical Center's Health Policy Institute, sought to debunk the notion that anyone who lacks health insurance could solve that problem simply by getting a job. Garson noted that despite its strong job market, Texas continued to lead the country in the share of its population -- 22.1 percent -- that was uninsured in 2013, according to a new Census Bureau report.

The same report from the bureau's American Community Survey included estimates of uninsured at the metropolitan area level. Among the 25 most populous metros in the country, Houston's 22.1 percent uninsured rate was the second highest, behind Miami at 25 percent. Dallas was third-highest at 21.5 percent.

In a press release extolling a court decision, state Rep. Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas, said it's a fact that Latinos "now make up the majority population in Texas."

He later conceded that as of July 2013, about 38 percent of the population was Hispanic. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, of the state's nearly 26.5 million residents at that time, 40 percent were white, 12.4 percent were black or African American and 4.3 percent were Asian.

Six decades after the U.S. Supreme Court said racially divided schools were unconstitutional, a curious thing has happened. Many school systems are more segregated than ever, but in a completely different way.

Tonight, PBS Frontline takes a look at this phenomenon in a documentary called Separate and Unequal. What about numbers in North Texas?

In 1971, when the federal court forced Dallas schools to integrate, the overwhelming majority of students -- 70 percent -- was white. A quarter were African American, in segregated schools, and the rest were Hispanic.

A recent population milestone could help bring additional businesses to Tyler and draw more people to the area, community leaders said.

According to U.S. Census estimates released in May, Tyler has officially reached a population of more than 100,000. Its 2013 population estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau is 100,223 - a 3.4 percent increase from the city's population in 2010.

Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter said he believes Tyler's growth has been a fairly healthy, natural increase, part of it due to migration.

According to the state demographer of Texas, Lloyd Potter, Texas’ population increases by 1,000 people every single day of the year.

Half of the increase is due to people relocating here, the other half is due to births and other factors. But at this rate, he says, the state's population could swell by 15 million in the next 25 years.

The U.S. Census Bureau corroborates this skyrocketing rate of growth. According to their latest report (for the year ending July 1, 2012), three of the five U.S. cities with the highest rate of growth are in Texas. Leading the pack is San Marcos with the highest growth rate - 4.9 percent – among all U.S. cities and towns with a population of 50,000 people or more.

The Dallas area continues to grow rapidly across all racial and ethnic groups, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, with Asian growth rates leading the way through the first three years of the decade.

But it was the group with the most modest growth rates — even a net loss in Dallas County -- that had demographers buzzing about a turnaround for counties with large urban populations.

"Let's look at Dallas County," said Steve Murdock, director of the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University. "There was growth in the Asian population, no doubt about it. But we also see a turnaround in growth in the non-Hispanic white population."

From 2010 to 2013, more people moved to Texas than anywhere else in the US.

In a Census study, Pew researchers found Austin to be the nation's "capital for population growth."

People are also drawn to four other Texas cities...San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth and Dallas.

Jobs and the cost of living are the main reasons folks move here. State demographer Lloyd Potter says Texas took less of a hit during the housing bubble which led to more stability during the meltdown of real estate and construction jobs during the recession.

Brian McGannon moved last year to Austin from Kansas City, Missouri, for a job, joining a new wave of migration to the South and West.

Austin is "a melting pot of culture and modern progressiveness that I've never seen before," said McGannon, who works as a writer and content manager for Grandex, a media and apparel company.

There was a lot of talk last week about new population figures which show Texas growing faster than any other states, and Houston and San Antonio as two of the fastest growing cities in the country.

But, 1200 WOAI news reports, what those statistics did not show is the fact that the state's population boom is limited entirely to the big cities in the so-called "Texas Triangle" of DFW, Austin, San Antonio and Houston, and the booming fracking fields of the Eagle Ford and the Cline Shale around Midland and Odessa.

There's no shortage of news on how rapidly Austin is growing, but a new report puts that expansion in a larger context, dubbing Austin "the nation's capital for population growth."

New U.S. Census data shows much of the nation's growth is concentrated in Texas, with Austin at the epicenter. Austin-area cities San Marcos, Georgetown and Cedar Park are all recognized for high percentage growth.

New growth sprouts along both sides of U.S. Highway 380 in northern Collin County, along the Sam Rayburn Tollway and within the gap between Interstate 35E and I-35W in Denton County.

These outer reaches of Dallas-Fort Worth are booming — the 2013 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau prove it.

Frisco and McKinney join five other Texas cities in the Census Bureau’s list of the 15 fastest-growing cities of 50,000 or more. Frisco ranks second, trailing only San Marcos, which also led the list in 2012.

For the first time in several years, Debbie Hughes is getting multiple offers on homes she's selling in Orange County.

When buyers battle for a new home, it's a sign that the economy - and the real estate market - is picking up, said Hughes, of Jerry Hughes Realty in Orange.

After several years of notably low and slow homes sales because of the nation's economic downturn, Realtors in Southeast Texans are starting to see more people buying and selling, with many opting to move within the Golden Triangle.

The trends in education for Texas Hispanics signal improvement to the state's labor force — more college graduates generally and fewer workers with high school educations or less.

And there is significant reason to believe these gains will not be enough.

We draw these conclusions from a report from the Texas State Data Center, based at UTSA, and the Office of the State Demographer. It examines changing Texas demographics and trends in educational attainment and their effect on the character of our projected labor force.

The major metropolitan areas of Texas remain among the fastest-growing in the U.S. — Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land ranks first, and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington is third — according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

But the counties that make up those metro areas grow in vastly different ways. While most of the suburban counties grew primarily through domestic migration, the central-city counties relied much more on natural increase — births minus deaths — and none more than Dallas.

Half of Collin County's growth in the year that ended in July 2013 came from people moving in from other parts of the U.S., and in Denton, almost 60 percent moved in.

Winding down her final months as mayor of Kyle, Lucy Johnson gave an address at the Kyle Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon March 25 that focused on the area's population boom and what the city is doing to meet the challenges such growth brings.

In her "state of the city" speech Tuesday, Johnson remarked on a recent study by the Office of the State Demographer that projected Hays would be the fastest growing county in Texas between 2014 and 2050.

"For those of you wondering how fast Kyle could see 200 percent growth, don't worry about waiting around that long," the mayor said, alluding to the county's projected growth rate between now and 2050. "By 2032, we could easily see over 85,000 people in Kyle, just using the relatively moderate growth patterns of 2010 to 2012."

A busy 80-mile stretch of I-35 connects Austin and San Antonio, with flourishing suburbs like Buda, Kyle, San Marcos and New Braunfels sitting between them. Yet, even though Austin and San Antonio are fairly close physically, they're not fully linked economically or psychologically.

Both the Austin and San Antonio metro areas boast booming populations; while faster-paced Austin is celebrated for its tech, music and college scenes, slower-paced San Antonio is hailed for its tourism, healthcare and military sectors. If anything, Austin and San Antonio may be friends, but they don’t hang out much in the same social circles.

A new research report by Rogelio Saenz, UTSA dean of the College of Public Policy and Peter Flawn Professor of Demography, contends that the single largest component of the U.S. child population will be Latino by 2060.

The report, "The State of Latino Children," explores the demographic trends of Latino children in the United States, including educational challenges, mortality rates and projected population growth from 2000 through 2060.

"A Changing City: Demographics and the Marketplace" marked the first topic of the City of Sugar Land's six-part Land Use Forum series at Sugar Land City Hall Jan. 15. Raleigh, N.C., Director of Planning Mitchell Silver, AICP, lent his view on Sugar Land's potential future from an objective outsider’s perspective, while Rice University Sociology Professor Dr. Stephen Klineberg provided his insight as a scholar who's studied the Greater Houston area's demographics, attitudes and trends for over 30 years. This is the second article in a two-part installment covering the forum, concluding with Klineberg's presentation on Rice University's Kinder Institute for Urban Research 2013 Houston area survey, "Tracking Responses to Economic and Demographic Transformations."

President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address tonight. He's expected to make a big deal about economic mobility and reducing income inequality in the U.S.

But the challenges are substantial when it comes to narrowing the divide. Texas has the eighth highest level of income inequality, based on 2010 Census data.

Despite boasting two large reservoirs, Bell County is among the areas vulnerable to water shortage in the state, according to a report released Tuesday by Texas Comptroller Susan Combs.

The 24-page study analyzed the effects of water shortages — including the historic 2011 drought — and made suggestions for boosting supplies to meet the needs of the state's growing population.

The local area has "medium" vulnerability to crises caused by limited water, according to Combs' report using data from University of Florida researchers based on fresh water available in liters per person, per day.

In a full-page advertisement in the Austin American-Statesman, Texans for Reliable Power suggested a need for more electricity generation in the state by presenting "facts" starting with: "Texas is experiencing the fastest population growth in the country. As we add more than 1,000 people a day, each new Texan and new business increases demand on our grid."

Is Texas (still) growing that fast?

In 2010, we rated as Mostly True a claim by Gov. Rick Perry that more than 1,000 people move to Texas every day. With help from the U.S. Census Bureau, we learned that about 635 people were then coming to Texas every day, on average. A census official based that number on average daily net migration from other states (393) plus average daily net migration from other countries (242). IRS data, meanwhile, suggested that about 1,353 a day switched their residence to Texas between the time they filed their tax returns in 2007 and when they filed in 2008.

Almost 3 million people in Texas are between the ages of 65 and 85, according to the office of the state demographer. That number is expected to more than double by the year 2040.

Texas – like the rest of the country – lacks enough geriatric mental health professionals to match the population. So experts are looking at alternatives to help seniors overcome depression -- that includes one approach using technology.