5 takeaways from our webinar on demographic changes and migration

Demographic changes in the U.S. are reshaping state budgets, housing policy and how we care for older Americans — and volatility has been the defining feature of population growth in the U.S. since the COVID pandemic.

Those are just a few of the big takeaways from our recent webinar, co-hosted with The Pew Charitable Trusts, on demographic changes and migration patterns.

I moderated the discussion, which featured three panelists:

• Alexandre Fall, principal associate with Pew’s Fiscal 50 project. His research helps policymakers understand fiscal, economic and demographic trends affecting their states by tracking tax revenue, reserves, employment rates, Medicaid spending and other issues important to long-term fiscal health.

• Sol Baik, senior researcher and project lead on aging and rehabilitative services research for the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia. She is responsible for building demographic data delivery for the Virginia Department of Aging and Rehabilitative Services.

• Riordan Frost, senior research analyst at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, who works on projects related to demographics, residential mobility, utilities, wealth inequality and homelessness.

It was a lively discussion that will help reporters covering demographics and migration understand population projections and other data, and find the stories beneath the topline numbers.

Watch the full hour below — and read on for five highlights.

1. Know that population change is increasingly driven by international migration, which can change quickly.

“Since the pandemic, volatility has been a defining feature of population growth,” Fall said.

There are two key reasons that populations change, he explained.

The first is called natural change. This is the difference between births and deaths.

The second is migration, which is simply people moving into or out of an area. At the national level, state-to-state migration doesn’t change overall population numbers.

Nationally, the population changes when people from overseas relocate to the U.S., or people from the U.S. relocate elsewhere.

“And in the last five years, population growth has swung down and up — and that has had a lot to do with international migration trends,” Fall said.

During the COVID pandemic in 2021, international migration plummeted.

In 2023 and 2024, it spiked.

Since last year, it has fallen again.

“The impacts of international migration have been felt all across the country,” Fall said. “For example, in 2025, 48 states saw a slowdown in their population growth, showing how this broad-level trend is affecting the nation as a whole in a synchronous way.”

2. Look at rates and raw numbers — they may tell different stories.

Many researchers and reporters focus on where high-income earners are moving to and where they’re leaving. Fall gave the example of Tennessee, which from 2018 to 2022 saw its high-income population grow more quickly than its low-income population.

“Given the amount of attention this group receives, you might naturally assume that they make up the largest share of people moving between states,” Fall said.

But in Tennessee, more lower-income earners settled in the state, even though the rate of growth was lower than high-income earners. This is because there are more lower-income earners to begin with, Fall explained — meaning that even a small percentage shift can represent a large number of people.

“Depending on the story you’re trying to tell, the topline number can obscure an important part of what’s happening underneath,” Fall said.

3. Understand what population projections mean and don’t mean.

Population projections at the world, national, state or more granular levels are based on assumptions. The University of Virgina’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, where Baik works, produces population projections for every U.S. state based on past demographic trends.

When journalists cite population projections in news articles, or use projections to develop story ideas, Baik urges them to look at the methodologies and assumptions underlying the projections. Understanding the goals of the organization producing the projections can also provide helpful context to reporters.

For example, the U.S. Census Bureau and other federal agencies produce population projections that vary because of methodological assumptions. Reporters who understand methodologies and motivations will have a good sense of what projections can and can’t tell them.

Baik said she fields questions about the Cooper Center projections — What would happen if births dramatically decline? Or if international migration surges or drops?

“Our set of products did not make that specific assumption, so we cannot answer those questions,” she said. “However our data can actually serve you better for state-to-state comparisons, and if you are a journalist for a specific state you could compare your state’s projected growth compared to other nearby states.”

4. Know that when reporting on older Americans, some demographic categories may be broad.

Any reporter who has written about demographics will have used population data that is divided into age categories. Some categories, such as 65-plus, can include people with a huge range of abilities and needs related to their age and health.

This is also a fast-growing demographic category, from 43 million people over age 65 in 2012 to 58 million people over 65 in 2022, according to the most recent Housing America’s Older Adults report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The broadness of this category is a data limitation that often comes down to sample sizes being too small when organizations or governments count or survey older Americans, Frost said.

A new edition of Housing America’s Older Adults is coming in January, he added. This report will dis-aggregate older Americans into two age categories: 65-79 and 80-plus.

5. Dig into these key data sources when reporting on demographics.

Frost pointed to three sources he uses for migration and demographic change research: the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Current Population Survey and data from the Population Estimates Program.

“The ACS and CPS are both surveys, available from the Census,” Frost said. “I find that if you get them from IPUMS, which is out of the University of Minnesota, that makes it much more user-friendly, harmonized across years, easier to kind of understand variables as well — and both data sets are available from IPUMS.”

The ACS is Frost’s gold standard for demographic detail.

But, it is less recent than the CPS data, which is monthly and comes with an annual supplement in March “that has a lot of great migration and other details,” he said.

The PEP data is useful for reporters and researchers looking for information on net population change, net internal migration and net international migration, Frost said.

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Link to 5 takeaways from our webinar on demographic changes and migration