Kansas Demographics

As of 2006, Kansas has an estimated population of 2,764,075, which is an increase of 15,903, or 0.6%, from the prior year and an increase of 71,128, or 2.6%, since the year 2000.[10] This includes a natural increase since the last census of 93,899 people (that is 246,484 births minus 152,585 deaths) and a decrease due to net migration of 20,742 people out of the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 44,847 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of 65,589 people.[11] The center of population of Kansas is located in Chase County, at 38°27?N, 96°32?W, approximately three miles north of the community of Strong City.[12]

As of 2004, the population included 149,800 foreign-born (5.5% of the state population), and an estimated 47,000 illegal aliens (1.7% of state population). The largest reported ancestries in the state are: German (25.9%), Irish (11.5%), English (10.8%), American (8.8%), French (3.1%), and Swedish (2.4%).[13] People of German ancestry are especially strong in the northwest, while those of British ancestry and descendants of white Americans from other states are especially strong in the southeast. Mexicans are present in the southwest and make up nearly half the population in certain counties. Many African Americans in Kansas are descended from the "Exodusters", newly freed blacks who fled the South for land in Kansas following the Civil War.

See Also British American and German-American

Kansas, as well as five other Midwest states (Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa), is feeling the brunt of a falling population. Known as a rural exodus, the last few decades have been marked by a migratory pattern out of the countryside into cities. The trends have people moving from rural areas into urban areas. Beginning in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, people moved for a variety of reasons. This problem persists to the present day in the western parts of Great Plains states such as Nebraska and Kansas.

Out of all the cities in these Midwestern states, 89% have fewer than 3000 people, and hundreds of those have fewer than 1000. In Kansas alone, there are more than 6,000 ghost towns, according to Kansas historian Daniel Fitzgerald. And between 1996 and 2004, almost half a million people left the six states surveyed. This "Rural flight," as it is called, has led to offers of free land and tax breaks as enticements to newcomers.[14] Rural flight has contributed to the urban sprawl of the major cities in Kansas, with people taking up residences in the suburbs at the fringe of urban areas.