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Two-Thirds of Iowa Counties Lost Population in One Century

Keith Greiner

August 9, 2020

In the 100 years between 1910 and 2010, over two of every three Iowa counties had a population decline. That’s 64 of the 99 counties. From our 21st century view, most of us might assume that population, and other key indicators could not have possibly declined to such a great extent. But while the total Iowa population increased by 37% during the same 100 years, these 64 counties declined by 27.2%. This analysis looks at the locations of the decline and identifies some associated patterns.

Graph 1, below, shows the historical population of Iowa, followed by a second Graph 2 showing the population of the 64 counties with net losses between 1910 and 2010. For both graphs I have selected to show 130 years of data from 1880 through 2010. I used the full 130 year period for the graphs because that full range is available.

For more detailed numbers, I focused on only the 100 years of change from 1910 through 2010. This focus is appropriate because people often look at time in terms of centuries. The range from 1910 through 2010 is a century ending with the most recent decennial census. For the total population in Graph 1, we a steady, almost linear population growth. However among the 64 selected counties, we see the population counts peaked in 1900 and again in 1920. The little valley reported for 1910 has little significance when compared to the overall decline of 27.2% from 1,144,146 to 833,039.

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The map presented below, shows the location of the counties with the greatest loss in population between 1910 and 2010. The darkest red shows the 16 counties with the greatest percentage loss. The lighter red shows the 34 counties with the next lowest category of percentage loss. The lightest green is a crossover category having 14 counties with negative growth, and 14 counties with a very low percentage of positive growth. The green categories are similarly ordered with the brightest green marking eight counties that have the greatest percentage growth.

What we see is the greatest loss occurring in the Central South and Central West. Of course the northern five rows of counties have their share of loss. The growth occurs in areas were the analysis of retail sales per business indicates strength in the Central and East Central regions. The single exception is Wapello county that seems to have retail sales per business strength, but continues to have weak population change with a 5.6% decline. To read about retail sales per business, go to this link.

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