Census data visualization: metropolitan population change by natural increase, international migration, and domestic migration

The Census regularly puts together new data visualizations to highlight newly collected data. The most recent visualization looks at population change in metropolitan areas between 2010-2011 and breaks down the change by natural increase, international migration, and domestic migration.

Several trends are quickly apparent:

1. Sunbelt growth continues at a higher pace and non-Sunbelt cities tend to lose residents by domestic migration.

2. Population increases by international migration still tends to be larger in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami.

3. There are some differences in natural increases to population. I assume this is basically a measure of birth rates.

However, I have two issues with this visualization. My biggest complaint is that the boxes are not weighted by population. New York has the largest natural increase to the population but it is also the largest metropolitan areas by quite a bit. A second issue is that the box sizes are not all the 50,000 or 10,000 population change as suggested by the key at the top. So while I can see relative population change, it is hard to know the exact figures.

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