All right Martin,no comment there from Floridatown.



By MEG HECKMAN
Monitor staff






New Hampshire continues to grow more rapidly than other states in the region, but new population figures released today suggest that the stream of newcomers is slowing down. Between July 2006 and July 2007, about 2,300 more people moved out of the state than into New Hampshire, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Demographers suspect the numbers reflect broad economic trends affecting New Hampshire and many other states.

"It looks like there's just less people moving around within the United States right now, probably because of the housing market," said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer and visiting professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire.

The types of people who usually move to New Hampshire - retirees and middle-aged adults with children - may be unable to sell their homes out of state, Johnson said. The residents who tend to leave, meanwhile, are younger and usually rent rather than own property.

Even with fewer out-of-staters moving in, births and other demographic factors nudged New Hampshire's population up by about 4,000 last year. Since 2000, the state has grown by 80,000 people, or about 6.5 percent. Demographers and state planners wonder if that trend will continue, given the tough housing market and the rising price of gasoline.

For decades, New Hampshire has seen steady growth in the south, especially along Interstate 93, as more people move north while continuing to commute to jobs in the Boston area. But Tom Duffy, a demographer at New Hampshire's Office of Energy and Planning, suspects long drives are becoming less appealing.

"The price of gasoline could be a barrier to the continued decentralizing of the population that we have become accustomed to since the end of the World War II," he said.

Although it's been eight years since the last full-scale census, the government is able to estimate broad demographic trends through birth and death records, income tax returns and other sources of data. The statistics released today track growth in counties across the nation.

The changes in New Hampshire's counties were far less dramatic than those in the South and West, where some fast-growing areas have experienced population increases of 70 percent or more since 2000. But the data reveals interesting local trends:

• Merrimack County grew the fastest, with an 8.8 percent increase in population since 2000. Carroll County wasn't far behind, posting an 8.5 percent gain. Duffy and Johnson suspect two different forces are at work: Carroll County is popular among retirees, while Merrimack County has been a destination for families moving from Massachusetts.

"It's sort of a natural extension of the growth that's taken place over the last 40 years along the I-93 corridor," Duffy said.

• Hillsborough County, which includes most of the state's urban centers, saw the largest numeric population increase since 2000 - 21,459.

• Coos County was the only region that saw its population shrink. Since 2000, it lost 1 percent of its residents, about 339 people.

• Two counties had fewer births than deaths between April 2000 and July 2007: Coos County, with 850 fewer births, and Carroll County, with 362 fewer births. Demographers call this phenomenon "natural decrease." Johnson says it's unusual for New England, but understandable considering the underlying trends.

"Coos County is losing a significant number of young adults," he said, "while Carroll County is having retirees move in."