Census Finds Pr. George's Population Shrinking

The number of residents moving out of Prince George's County has steadily increased over the past decade, with the population loss almost offset by births and newcomers from overseas, according to annual census estimates released today.

Other Washington area inner counties such as Arlington, Fairfax and Montgomery also have been losing residents to the outer suburbs and other parts of the country. In contrast to Prince George's, the migration from those counties was smaller last year compared with the previous period.

That decline, along with a nationwide cooling of the housing market, might be contributing to the continued slowdown in the growth of outer Virginia counties such as Loudoun and Prince William, which once were magnets for inner-county residents.

During the early 2000s, Loudoun's population increased by as much 9 percent a year. By contrast, in each of the past two years, the county grew by less than 5 percent, causing Loudoun to drop from second to fifth place in the Census Bureau's ranking of the country's fastest-growing counties. Similarly, Prince William, whose population once increased by more than 4 percent a year, is growing by about 2 percent.

Nonetheless, those counties, along with some of Maryland's outer counties, are attracting residents from elsewhere in the region and the United States. Since 2001, when Prince George's lost a net 2,000 residents to domestic migration, the county has been hemorrhaging ever more residents each year -- culminating in a net 17,422 people who moved out of Prince George's to elsewhere in the country between July 2006 and July 2007.

If not for the more than 4,000 people who moved to Prince George's from overseas as well as the number of births, the county's overall population would have declined precipitously. As it was, Prince George's shrank by 0.7 percent.

"We're a first-ring suburb, a place where people first come to establish themselves. And our population is younger and therefore has greater mobility," said Joseph Valenza, an economist with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission who focuses on Prince George's. "The people who are leaving [Prince George's] are probably reaching the next stage of their household cycle, whether it's marrying and buying a house, or buying a second, larger house. So they're going to the outer suburbs, where there's cheaper land."

Similar factors have been playing out over the past decade in Arlington, Fairfax and Montgomery counties, as well as in the District. Demographers suggest that over the past year, declining housing prices might have prompted many residents of those locations to stay put rather than move.

"I think a lot of people are holding their cards and waiting for the market to resolve itself," said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. "There are lots of people who are at the stage in their life cycle where they would have normally moved to the outer suburbs but who are waiting for the market to improve so they can sell their current home at a higher price and buy the kind of new place they want."

That effect was most noticeable in Fairfax, from which a net of 11,959 people moved to other parts of the country during the 2006-07 period, compared with more than 21,000 a year earlier. Similarly, Arlington lost a net of about 1,000 residents to domestic out-migration, substantially fewer than the 3,400 who left in the previous period. The trend was also apparent, albeit less pronounced, in Montgomery, which lost a net 11,455 residents, almost 1,000 fewer than during the previous period.

Valenza speculated that because housing prices have not risen -- and subsequently fallen -- as sharply in Prince George's, the cooling market might have played less of a role in discouraging homeowners from selling.