Recently, I’ve had some fun mapping the 13 counties that contain half of the state’s population, as well as the 42 least populated counties with 10% of North Carolina’s total population.
In Monday’s post, I mentioned that there are significant racial/ethnic differences in the likelihood of living in a municipality. In particular, Asian residents are highly clustered in the state’s largest urban areas. To put this clustering in perspective, it takes 16 counties with the largest population of non-Hispanic whites to reach half of North Carolina’s white population. For Asians, 52% of the state’s Asian population is contained in three counties: Wake, Mecklenburg, and Guilford.
The only racial/ethnic group more geographically concentrated in North Carolina is American Indians. Two counties—Robeson and Cumberland—account for half of the state’s American Indian population, with 47% living in Robeson alone. Black and Hispanic residents are less geographically concentrated than Asian and American Indian residents, but more concentrated than whites.
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