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The size and growth of state populations in the United States

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  • Kwok Tong Soo

    (Lancaster University)

Abstract

This paper explores the population distribution across U.S. states over time. We test for Zipf's Law on the size distribution of state populations and Gibrat's Law for the growth of state populations. State populations follow a lognormal distribution more closely than they do a Zipf or Pareto distribution. State population growth is negatively related to current state population in the 19th century but not in the 20th century, and is positively related to market potential in the 20th century but not in the 19th century.

Suggested Citation

  • Kwok Tong Soo, 2012. "The size and growth of state populations in the United States," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(2), pages 1238-1249.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-11-00689
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    Cited by:

    1. Grachev, Gennady A., 2022. "Size distribution of states, counties, and cities in the USA: New inequality form information," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 592(C).
    2. Rafael González-Val, 2019. "US city-size distribution and space," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 283-300, July.
    3. Angelina Hackmann & Torben Klarl, 2020. "The evolution of Zipf's Law for U.S. cities," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(3), pages 841-852, June.
    4. Guohua Peng & Fan Xia, 2016. "The size distribution of exporting and non-exporting firms in a panel of Chinese provinces," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95, pages 71-85, March.
    5. González-Val, Rafael, 2018. "The spatial distribution of US cities," MPRA Paper 89586, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Kwok Tong Soo, 2018. "Innovation across cities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 295-314, March.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Zipf's Law; Gibrat's Law; US states; dynamic panel data models;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R1 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics

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