The decline of the coal industry made the top two coal-producing states, Wyoming and West Virginia, lose more of their population this year than any other state, the Bureau of the Census estimates.
"Those two, and others in the lower echelon, have something in common: resource dependence," notes Andew Van Dam of The Washington Post. "That helps explain why the state went from the fourth-fastest growing in 2012 (D.C. was first that year) to rock bottom in 2017." Wyoming's loss was entirely from its residents moving out; its births outnumbered its deaths; that was not the case in West Virginia, which lost its status as No. 1 coal state to Wyoming decades ago.
"Those two, and others in the lower echelon, have something in common: resource dependence," notes Andew Van Dam of The Washington Post. "That helps explain why the state went from the fourth-fastest growing in 2012 (D.C. was first that year) to rock bottom in 2017." Wyoming's loss was entirely from its residents moving out; its births outnumbered its deaths; that was not the case in West Virginia, which lost its status as No. 1 coal state to Wyoming decades ago.
Both states suffer from the resource curse, "in which natural-resource wealth actually harms developing countries because it crowds out important long-term investments in infrastructure, education and industrialization," Van Dam writes. "Resource-dependent states may see a population recovery in 2018 thanks to a partial recovery in energy prices, but that does nothing to break their cycle of dependence on global commodity markets." He contrasts Wyoming with its neighbor, Idaho, which was the fastest-growing state this year, followed by Nevada, Utah and Washington.
The story has three good charts, one showing the growth or loss rankings of each state by decade since 1900; another with the percentages of state gross domestic product in 2016 that came from mining, including oil and gas (20.29 percent in Wyoming, 11.52 percent in West Virginia); and the sources of population growth or loss: migration from other states, migration from abroad, and net births and deaths (indicated by different colors). Here's an emendated screenshot of the bottom of that chart, showing the states that lost population (as shown by the horizontal black lines to the left of the chart's vertical axis; Wyoming's line shows that it lost almost 1 percent of its population this year):
Here's a screenshot of the top three-fifths of the first chart, with the states ranked by this year's estimated growth:
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