Iowa’s large cities continued to make population gains in 2016, but new data from the U.S. Census Bureau this week shows smaller cities didn’t fare as well. In just the last year, Iowa’s micropolitans — communities with 10,000 to 50,000 people — shrunk in population by a net total of point-four percent. Iowa State University Economist Dave Swenson says the trend of small towns becoming smaller is seen throughout the western Midwest.
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Swenson says for decades, data has shown high rates of Iowans younger than age-45 moving away from small towns.
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Small towns located east of the Mississippi River are doing better. Swenson says many of those communities are located near larger cities and enjoy some spillover benefits. A handful of Iowa micropolitans are bucking the trend of population loss. Most significantly, Spirit Lake grew by point-seven percent (0.7%) in the last year, and three-point-four percent (3.4%) since 2010. Last year, Spencer and the Fort Madison-Keokuk area saw the greatest declines. Both lost one percent (1%) of their populations