The Kansas City MSA (metropolitan statistical area, which includes counties in Kansas as well as Missouri) grew by just under 200,000 persons, a 10.9% growth rate over the decade ending April 1, 2010. In contrast, the St. Louis MSA (which includes counties in Illinois) added only 114,000 persons for a 4.2% growth rate. St. Louis is still about 50% larger than Kansas City (roughly 2.7 million vs. 1.8) but, as with the nation, things are grower faster out west than they are back east.

One of the key components of the population growth in the Kansas City area was the influx of hispanics. In 2000 only 5.1% of the Kansas City population was hispanic; this portion more than doubled by 2010 when it rose to just under 11%. More than a thrid (36.4%) of the population growth in the KC metro area was accounted for by the increase in hispanics. On the other side of the state it was a different story in St. Louis. While the portion of the population that was hispanic did increase slightly, from 1.5% in 2000 to 2.6% in 2010, in the St. Louis metro area, this was an increase of only about 31,600 hispanic persons which was about 27% of the overall net increase of 114,200 people.

Here are the basic figures, in a report we generated using our Uexplore/Dexter software.
If reports are hard to read, try maximizing the browser window and/or using your browser's Zoom function (ctrl-+) to increase the image size.

And here is the breakdown by the counties comprising the metro areas:

Notable Trends

1. In Kansas City there is a "growth gap" between the Missouri and Kansas portions of the MSA. The Kansas side grew by over 14% while the Missouri side posted only an 8.5% increase.

2. In St. Louis, the Illinois portion grew only slightly faster (percentage-wise) than the Missouri portion: 4.8% vs. 4.1%

3. Both metro areas featured single counties that were growth super stars. In Kansas City it was Johnson County, KS with a remarkable increase of over 93,000 as it grew to be the largest county in the state of Kansas with over 450,000 population. In St. Louis it was St. Charles County, which continued a multi-decade growth pattern by adding over 76,000 peope, a 27% increase. It was responsible for 2/3 of the net increase for the entire St. Louis metropolitan area. Lincoln and Warren counties experienced even larger percentage increases (35 and 32.6%) but these were based on relatively small base populations. Their combined increases were just under 22,000.

4. Only one county in the Kansas City area experienced a population decline over the decade; that was Wyandotte Coumty, KS with a loss of only 377 out of a base population of almost 158,000. In St. Louis there were three counties that experienced population loss. By far the biggest loser was the City of St. Louis, which lost almost 29,000 persons, or 8.3% of its 2000 population. The city's figure was something of a shock to local officials who had been successfully challenging the Census Bureau's official estimates throughout the latter part of the decade. The census count fell over 37,000 short of a projected 4-1-2010 estimate based on the latest 2009 estimate for the city.

   St. Louis County fell below the million-population mark with a loss of over 17,000, or 1.7%. And Macoupin County, IL also posted a small loss of 1,254 persons, or 2.6%.

Comparing the Cities

We have been focusing on trends at the metro area and county levels here. But many people may be more interested in trends for the two central cities of these areas. Kansas City, Missouri the city grew by a modest 18,175 persons or 4.1% over the decade. We have already seen the figures for St. Louis City, since as an independent city it doubles as a county. It lost almost 29,000 residents, just over 8% during the decade. Of course, comparing these two city entities is a bit like comparing Rhode Island to Pennsylvania. Kansas City is a sprawling city of over 315 square miles occupying major portions of Jackson, Platte and Clay counties and a tiny portion of Cass. Anyone who has taken the drive up I-435 to the Kansas City airport knows that much of the land inside the city limits is still open country, ready for (or already under) development. St. Louis City is just the opposite. It is a small (62 square miles, about a fifth the size of KC) landlocked city, with very little open space suitable for development. It has a population density of 5,264 persons per square mile of land, compared with Kansas City's 1,388 figure.

Accessing The Data Via Uexplore/Dexter

If you would be interested in seeing how we accessed the CBSA and county-level data used in this article from our data archive you can navigate to the pl942010 data directory and then click on the Queries subdirectory entry (4th line in file section). There are two two relevant pre-defined queries:

1. cbsatrends_kcstl.htm extracts the data at the metro-area and metro-area-within-state levels.

2. cbsatrends_kcstlcounties.htm extracts the data at the county level for the two metro areas.

All you need to do once you follow the link to these queries is click on an Extract Data button in order to rerun the query, exactly as pre-coded. You also have the option of modifying the query if you wish, which requires that you know something about how to use the Dexter query form to to tell the Dexter application just what data you want. See the links to the Dexter Quick Start Guide and to the online help if Dexter is new to you.

Of course you are by no means limited to using predefined queries to access the pl94 data for 2010. You can also select any of the datasets in the pl942010 data directory (or one of its subdirectories) and do your own extract from scratch using Dexter.

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