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The graph compares population growth in large metro counties to small metros and nonmetro counties. Large metro counties include the core and suburban counties of metros of 1 million or more and the central counties of metros with 250,000 to 1 million. (Robert Cushing using Census population estimates)
The overwhelming population growth story of the past 50 years has been the increasing concentration of people in central cities and their suburbs. At the same time, growth has slowed in rural America and in smaller cities.
The central counties in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas (those with more than a million people) include just 2% of all counties, 59 of 3,142. But these few counties account for 24% the nation’s population growth over the past five decades.