In the span of just a generation or so, the demographic profile of Connecticut has been transformed more profoundly than any other New England state. A half-century ago one of the Northeast’s whitest states, Connecticut’s 3.5 million residents today reflect a much more heterogeneous picture — 80 percent white, 12 percent African-American and 16 percent […]
In the span of just a generation or so, the demographic profile of Connecticut has been transformed more profoundly than any other New England state. A half-century ago one of the Northeast’s whitest states, Connecticut’s 3.5 million residents today reflect a much more heterogeneous picture — 80 percent white, 12 percent African-American and 16 percent Hispanic/Latino (percentages exceed 100 because some respondents identify with more than one demographic group).
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The bulk of that demographic shift is most evident in the state’s cities. The populations of Connecticut’s largest urban areas, Bridgeport and Hartford, have in just a generation transformed to predominantly non-white residents: In 2016 whites comprised 23 and 15 percent, respectively, of the population of those two cities.
(It is not merely a statistical anomaly, but a social challenge, that those urban areas border suburban communities such as Fairfield and Glastonbury, where whites make up more than 90 percent of the population.)
But not all Connecticut cities illustrate the same trends — or reflect the same results. In New Haven, the population balance among the city’s black, brown and white populations is unmatched by any other mid-sized New England city — as well as by nearly any other major U.S. city. Whites comprise 43 percent of the population, African-Americans 33 percent and Hispanic/Latino residents 30 percent.
Moreover, the Elm City’s long decline in population from its historic peak of 165,000 in 1950 was arrested from its nadir in 2000 (123,626) and has been rising slowly but steadily in the 21st century to an estimated 131,014 in 2017 (source: American Community Survey). The New Haven metro area is projected to see a population increase of about 11 percent by 2040, according to the Connecticut State Data Center at the University of Connecticut — one of only about one-third of state municipalities expected to grow in population over that period.
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Most encouraging for New Haven is that the much-ballyhooed “brain drain” that has vexed Connecticut — young people leaving for career opportunities, lifestyle choices and economic realities — appears to have shifted somewhat into reverse in the Elm City. Much of the city’s population growth is projected to come from young people, and New Haven is one of the few cities in the Northeast with a majority of its population under age 35.
That’s a hopeful harbinger for the years and decades to come.
