Population change and its parts

Deaths outnumbered births in 2,222 of 3,144 US counties from April 2020 to July 2025, and in 1,073 of 1,209 European small regions in 2023. 1,132 of those counties and 667 of those regions grew anyway.

Total change is natural change (births minus deaths) plus net migration. The maps show each as a rate per 1,000 residents on a scale centred at zero, and the form “Parts that add up” draws all three with one key so they can be added.

Natural change is births minus deaths. Net migration is people moving in minus people moving out, and for US counties the Census Bureau splits it into moves between counties (domestic) and moves to and from other countries (international), which the measure control shows separately. A place can lose people to deaths and still grow, or add births and still shrink, depending on the sign and size of the other part.

The two publishers build the figures differently. The Census Bureau publishes counts, and the US rates here divide each component, summed from April 2020 to July 2025, by the county’s April 2020 estimates base. Eurostat publishes rates per 1,000 of each region’s average population in the year, and it derives net migration as total change minus natural change, so its migration figure carries a statistical adjustment along with the moves themselves.

A rate puts a county of a thousand people and a county of ten million on the same footing. That suits the question of which places are growing. For US counties, the line under each map also gives the share of April 2020 residents living in counties below zero.