Demographics of New York
Encyclopedia

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2006, New York was the third largest state in population after California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 and Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, with an estimated population of 19,306,183, which is a decrease of -9,538 from the prior year and an increase of 329,362, or 1.7%, since the year 2000. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 601,779 people (1,576,125 births minus 974,346 deaths) and a decrease due to net migration of 422,481 people out of the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 820,388 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of about 800,213. This means a very small population change for the state.
New York is a slow growing state, that has a large emigration rate. Yet, when looking at immigration statistics, the state is a leading recipient of migrants from around the globe. Recently, the population has fallen, mostly because immigration failed to surpass emigration in 2006. However, on January 1, 2007, New York's population count increased, giving it a slight change from 2006. This could mean that the population will continue to increase, giving it a better chance for more house seats, otherwise, trends will remain.

The center of population
Center of population
In demographics, the center of population of a region is a geographical point that describes a centerpoint of the region's population...

 of New York is located in Orange County
Orange County, New York
Orange County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area and is located at the northern reaches of the New York metropolitan area. The county sits in the state's scenic Mid-Hudson Region of the Hudson Valley...

, in the town of Deerpark
Deerpark, New York
Deerpark is a town in the western part of Orange County, New York. The population was 7,858 at the 2000 census. As of July 2009, population at 8,524. The center of population of New York is located in Cuddebackville, a hamlet in Deerpark.__toc__...

. Roughly 64% of the states population lives in the New York City metropolitan area and 43% in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 alone.

Population

New York state's population is center around urban city's. The largest city in the state is New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, which is also one of the world's most ethnically diverse and cosmopolitan cities. The state also has large population in cities of Albany
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...

, Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

, Rochester
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

 and Syracuse
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...

. The state has 20 counties the most populated one is Kings County (better known as Brooklyn).

According to 2004 estimate, 20.4% of the population was foreign-born. New York City is said to have the largest number of foreign-born residents in America, even higher than Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 and Miami known to been major hubs of immigration in the late 20th century. The top ancestry groups in New York state are Italian American
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...

 (15.8%), African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 (14.4%), Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...

 (14.2%), Irish
Irish American
Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...

 (12.9%), German
German American
German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry and comprise about 51 million people, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group...

 (11.1%), English
English American
English Americans are citizens or residents of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England....

 (6%) and Polish
Polish American
A Polish American , is a citizen of the United States of Polish descent. There are an estimated 10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the population of the United States...

 (5.27%).
1.5% of the state population is Mixed-Race/Multiracial.

New York contains the largest Puerto Rican population (concentrated in parts of New York City: The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan) and also the largest Dominican
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...

 population (concentrated in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx) in the country. New York City is home to many African Americans the majority with roots in the US but includes those with roots in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 Islands like Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

 and Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

, and some are recent immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

n countries. The Bronx has a large population of blacks of Latin American origin, but so does northern Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 (Harlem) and Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 which had American-born black majorities since the 1920s, as well the largest African-American population of any state. New York City has the state's largest Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...

 population, while it has now surpassed California with the largest Chinese American
Chinese American
Chinese Americans represent Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans...

 community by population number. New York City is now over a third Latino, 15 percent Asian American and various estimates of 20 to 25 percent black/African-American.

Demographics from the 2000 census

In the 2000 Census, Italian Americans make up the largest ancestral group in Staten Island and Long Island, followed by Irish Americans and Polish Americans. Manhattan's leading ancestry group is Dominicans since the 2000 census, followed by Irish Americans, then Italian Americans and more than 200 nationalities are counted, plus comparably large numbers of residents with Dutch, Greek, Russian
Russian American
Russian Americans are primarily Americans who traces their ancestry to Russia. The definition can be applied to recent Russian immigrants to the United States, as well as to settlers of 19th century Russian settlements in northwestern America which includes today's California, Alaska and...

 and Swedish ancestry. Albany and southeast-central New York are heavily Irish American and Italian American. In Buffalo and western New York, German Americans are the largest group along with Polish Americans and other Slavic
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

 nationalities; in the northern tip of the state, French Canadians. New York State has a higher number of Italian-Americans than any other U.S. state. New York City is also said to be home to two million of Italian descent alone. NYC was once called the largest German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Polish and Russian communities outside their representative countries of origin.

Sometimes classified an ethnic group
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...

 by some demographers and sometimes as a religious identity (Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

), American Jews
American Jews
American Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants...

 of various nationalities and various denominations, but most are American-born, are a major social presence in New York. An estimated 1 to 2 million alone in New York City and another 1 to 1.5 million live in surrounding areas, sometimes New York is referred to as the "world's largest Jewish city" since the mid-19th century. The first wave of Jewish immigrants in New York are of Sephardic origin, a scant 10,000 from Holland, Italy, Spain and Portugal in the 17th and 18th centuries, but in the 19th century more newcomers were first German and finally in the early 20th century millions from Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

 like Poland and Russia, both of Ashkenazi origin. In the late 20th century, a smaller wave of Russian Jews and Ukrainian Jews settled in the Brighton Beach
Brighton Beach
Brighton Beach is an oceanside neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. As of 2000, it has a population of 75,692 with a total of 31,228 households.-Location:...

 section in Brooklyn, and New York has many Israeli-American residents.

The intense development, urbanization and suburban sprawl of New York City makes it the most populated region in the U.S., an estimated 20 to 30 million in the eight-state Megalopolis
Megalopolis (city type)
A megalopolis is typically defined as a chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas. The term was used by Oswald Spengler in his 1918 book, The Decline of the West, and Lewis Mumford in his 1938 book, The Culture of Cities, which described it as the first stage in urban overdevelopment and...

 stretching 500 miles from Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 to Washington DC, with New York City in the middle has 15 million residents in a 100 mile radius including Philadelphia (1.5 million in its' city limits), northern New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 and Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

. The bulk of New York's population lives within two hours of New York City. According to the July 1, 2004 Census Bureau Estimate
, New York City and its six closest New York State satellite counties (Suffolk
Suffolk County, New York
Suffolk County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York on the eastern portion of Long Island. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,493,350. It was named for the county of Suffolk in England, from which its earliest settlers came...

, Nassau
Nassau County, New York
Nassau County is a suburban county on Long Island, east of New York City in the U.S. state of New York, within the New York Metropolitan Area. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,339,532...

, Westchester
Westchester County, New York
Westchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Westchester covers an area of and has a population of 949,113 according to the 2010 Census, residing in 45 municipalities...

, Rockland
Rockland County, New York
Rockland County is a suburban county 15 miles to the northwest of Manhattan and part of the New York City Metropolitan Area, in the U.S. state of New York. It is the southernmost county in New York west of the Hudson River, and the smallest county in New York outside of New York City. The...

, Putnam
Putnam County, New York
Putnam County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York, in the lower Hudson River Valley. Putnam county formed in 1812, when it detached from Dutchess County. , the population was 99,710. It is part of the New York Metropolitan Area. The county seat is the hamlet of Carmel...

 and Orange
Orange County, New York
Orange County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area and is located at the northern reaches of the New York metropolitan area. The county sits in the state's scenic Mid-Hudson Region of the Hudson Valley...

) have a combined population of 12,626,200 people, or 65.67% of the state's population.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 13.61% of the population aged 5 and older speak Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 at home, while 2.04% speak Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

 (including Cantonese and Mandarin), 1.65% Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, and 1.23% Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 http://www.mla.org/map_data_results&state_id=36&mode=state_tops.
In age demographics: 6.5% of New York's population were under 5 years of age, 24.7% under 18, and 12.9% were 65 or older. Females made up 51.8% of the population. New York state has a fluctating population growth rate, it has experienced some shrinkage in the 1970s and 1980s, but milder growth in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.

Religions

As reported in 2001 the religious affiliations of the people of New York were:
  • Christian
    Christianity
    Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

     – 68%
    • Roman Catholic
      Roman Catholicism in the United States
      The Catholic Church in the United States is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, the Christian Church in full communion with the Pope. With more than 68.5 registered million members, it is the largest single religious denomination in the United States, comprising about 22 percent of the population...

       – 38%
    • Baptist
      Baptist
      Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

       – 7%
    • Methodist
      Methodism
      Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...

       – 6%
    • Presbyterian
      Presbyterianism
      Presbyterianism refers to a number of Christian churches adhering to the Calvinist theological tradition within Protestantism, which are organized according to a characteristic Presbyterian polity. Presbyterian theology typically emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures,...

       – 2%
    • Episcopal – 2%
    • Lutheran – 2%
    • Pentecostal – 2%
    • Other Christian (including unspecified denomination) – 13%
  • Jewish
    Judaism
    Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

     – 9%
  • Muslim/Islamic
    Muslim
    A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

     – 3.5%
  • Buddhist
    Buddhism
    Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

    – 1%
  • Other Religions – 4%
  • Non-Religious – 13%


6% of the people surveyed refused to answer.

Endnotes

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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