BY MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph suffered a decline in population over the last ten years according to the US Census Bureau.
Corey Mihalik of the Missouri census data center says the decline in St. Joseph was slight, 5.6 percent or about forty three hundred people .
"Which is kind of unusual," says Mihalik. "And as much as most urban centers saw population increases and rural areas saw population decreases, so that's kind of one the intersting cases around the state, in that it's one of the major cities that we actually saw a population decline rather than an increase."
But Mihalik says it's not because people are moving away from the area, but because fewer people have children.
"What we were seeing is that the declines are much larger in the under 18 population than the over 18 population," Mihalik says. "So a lot of the decline in population is more due to the, we assume here, people not having children rather than actual migratory changes."
Mihalik says both Andrew and Buchanan counties were a part of that trend. Andrew county saw gains in population up 4.8%, while Buchanan County saw drops of 4.9%.