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West Virginia is losing population faster than any other state in the USA, according to newly released U.S. Census numbers. The bureau says the state lost about 3,300 residents last year, or 0.2 percent of the population.
The bureau has long predicted a population decline for the first quarter of the 21st Century, and so far the state is ahead of their projection.
The Mountain State has the highest or near highest number of aging population.
Only five other states â Vermont, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and Alaska â lost population last year.
West Virginia's population losses were not limited to any one area, with 39 of the 55 counties having a population loss.
Calhoun has been maintaining a population just above 7,500. The county reached a high in 1940 of 12,455 at the height of the agricultural era and began a rapid decline after World War II starting in 1950 with exodus from the farms.
At a 2.8 percent loss, Clay County's population was the highest loser.
There are two factors in population loss or gain â natural increase and migration.
Natural increase is just the difference between how many people are born and how many die. Last year, West Virginia had a negative natural increase of about 1,300 because 1,300 more people died than were born.
The Census figures show that West Virginia also saw a net loss of about 1,600 people to migration â people moving to other states or other countries.
Also in the equation, the outward migration from rural areas to urban areas, with about 15% of the nation's citizens still living in rural areas. It once was about equal.
WVU economists blamed some of the state's population decline on the collapsing coal industry, but counties in the heart of the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom also lost population.
Marshall, Wetzel, Doddridge, Harrison and Ritchie counties, all major Marcellus gas producers, lost residents last year, according to the Census.
Ted Boettner, director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, called natural-gas drilling a capital-intensive industry, in that it requires lots of equipment and machinery but comparatively few workers.
"It doesn't employ that many people, and a lot of the people that it does employ aren't from West Virginia," Boettner said.
Berkeley County saw the state's biggest population gain last year, more than 1,800 residents, and Jefferson, Morgan and Hampshire counties saw gains.
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