Tennessee Population Projections

Population Projections for the State of Tennessee

2005 to 2025

A joint publication of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations

and The University of Tennessee Center for Business and Economic Research

December 2003

Contributors to this Report

Harry A. Green, Ph.D. TACIR Executive Director

Matthew N. Murray, Ph.D. CBER Associate Director and Project Director

Julie L. Marshall, M.A. CBER Research Associate

Stacia E. Couch, B.A. CBER Publications Specialist

Alex Ransom CBER Student Assistant

Colin McLeod, M.C.P. Tennessee Office of Local Planning, Principal Planner

Kenneth E. Belliveau, M.C.P., AICP TACIR Senior Research Associate

Teresa A. Gibson TACIR Publications Assistant

Table of Contents

Overview............................................................................................................... 1 Key Findings ......................................................................................................... 3 Aggregate Projections for State ............................................................................ 6 Aggregate Projections for Counties ...................................................................... 8 Aggregate Projections for Cities Arrayed by County ........................................... 12 Aggregate Projections for Cities Alphabetically .................................................. 26 Aggregate Projections for Counties by Development District.............................. 36 Aggregate Projections for Counties within MSAs................................................ 55 Technical Appendix............................................................................................. 58

Overview

Population Projections for Tennessee, 2005 to 2025

Overview

This report provides updated population projections for Tennessee counties and cities, and for the state as a whole, in five-year intervals extending to 2025. The projections are intended to be used as a tool in the planning process, particularly at the local level in support of Public Chapter 1101, commonly referred to as the Growth Management Law. Those who make use of these population projections should be aware that the Tennessee Department of Health has recently released population projections for the state and sub-state areas as well. The estimates produced by the Department of Health project a slightly lower rate of statewide population growth than the estimates presented here and are based on some different assumptions about the rate of in-migration of people into local communities and the state.

Unlike the estimates prepared and released in 1998 by the Center for Business and Economic Research, the current estimates were developed using the well-established cohort-component technique that is widely used in the field of demography. The cohort-component method, explained in greater detail in the Technical Appendix to this report, builds up population estimates by looking at the components of population change: births, deaths, and migration. Fertility and mortality rates are generally quite stable, so migration becomes a critical component of demographic forecasting. Because the projections developed here extend so far into the future (to the year 2025) and the 1990s were a period of unprecedented population growth, an average migration rate for the past four decades is used in this analysis.

The use of the cohort-component technique has enabled development of more detailed demographic projections for the state and sub-state areas. Specifically the current projections offer detail on the age and gender composition of counties, cities and unincorporated areas of counties. (The Department of Health projections provide age/gender/race detail but only for county units.) Generally estimates such as these are less precise than estimates of aggregate population. Accordingly the detailed demographic estimates must be used with caution. Greatest confidence is placed in demographic projections for Tennessee counties, since the data used to support these estimates are generally deemed to be of relatively high quality. Estimates for sub-county areas are likely to be less precise than their county-level counterparts so additional caution is warranted in their use.

Estimates are presented for counties, cities, and unincorporated areas. The cohort-component model provides county-level figures; population estimates for specific sub-county areas (both cities and unincorporated areas) are extrapolated from the county estimates using actual population data for 2000, 2001, and 2002. It must be recognized that it is impossible to explicitly account for the way the growth management law might cause future population settlement patters to differ from the past. While an intent of the law is to increase relative city densities, this has not been directly factored in to the estimates.

When projections were made in 1998, heavy reliance was placed generally on data from the 1990 Census, and in particular on city-level estimates through 1997. The 1990 Census figures have been criticized for undercounting the population, although the magnitude of the undercount has not been well documented. (The 1990 undercount is another reason for using a four-decade average migration rate as noted above.) The current projections benefit from the more recent and presumably more accurate 2000 Census; the city-level projections rely heavily on 2000 Census data and estimates for subsequent years. Differences in methodology and better quality data have produced significant differences in the current estimates for some cities and counties vis-?-vis those developed in 1998; estimates of the state-level population have changed little. Again, the Technical Appendix to this report provides additional detail on the methodology and data used to arrive at and verify the projections.

The estimates presented in the body of the report are formatted in a variety of ways to facilitate their use. The first major section of tables provides aggregate projections for (i) counties; (ii) cities arrayed by their

Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations Center for Business and Economic Research

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