Recent reports show that the Washington area’s population growth has been driven almost entirely by immigrants who choose to live in the suburbs, while growth from residents who have moved here from other cities has been canceled out by those who have left. The population of the Washington-area increased by 1.6 million people between 1985 and 2007, “but none of the growth is attributable to domestic migration,” according to a George Mason University School of Public Policy report. The flows of people coming to the area from other parts of the country were offset by the flows of people leaving the region for other parts of the United States, the report said. Many of D.C.’s migrants came from New York, Boston and Philadelphia. People who left the region tended to go to Southern or Western cities.
“At the same time, the Washington, D.C., region became a magnet for foreign immigrants from Latin America, Asia and Africa,” the George Mason report said.
Meanwhile, Census Bureau data shows that D.C.’s outer suburbs were nearly the only counties in the area that saw increases in the number of non-Hispanic white residents. Arlington County and the District, considered the “core” of the region by demographers, also saw increases in white residents.
According to a Brookings Institution report, the housing boom in the early 2000s attracted closer-in residents to those outer suburbs. – Liz Farmer
