Economics professor gives closer look at expected population growth in Tennessee

JACKSON, Tenn. — Tennessee’s population is expected to reach 7.94 million by the year 2040.

A projected overall population increase of nearly 900,000 people will increase the number of residents by 12.6%. We spoke to the professor of health economics who explained what this would mean for Tennessee.

Boyd distinguished professor Matt Harris told us that by 2040, ages 65 and up are expected to increase by 25% compared to the 2022 census estimate, with a 36% spike among those aged 75 to 84.

“We expect that, as this generation ages into that part of life, that the number of people aged 65 and up will continue to increase,” said Harris.

By that time, roughly 60% of the state is projected to be among Hispanics and Black or African Americans.

“We’ve seen our state become increasingly diverse over the last couple of decades particularly with Hispanic populations and persons with two or more races. We expect that both of those trends are going to continue,” said Harris.

He said that net migration has been really high over the past 2 years.

“Over the last decade, almost all of the net migration that was occurring was people moving to Nashville. Something like 60% of the net migration in our state from 2010 to 2020 was in five counties surrounding Nashville,” said Harris.

He said the difference now is that you see more and more people moving to rural areas.

“They’ve seen 39,000 over the first three years of this decade and so we have a lot of rural counties in our state that are really seeing unprecedented growth right now. From a demographic to a population perspective, we’re still trying to see what the new normal looks like,” said Harris.

Harris also said that as the baby boom generation reaches the later stages of life, a rising number of deaths will begin to slow population increases.

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