One occasional confusion is the misconception that the point splits the US population into two equal halves, such that half of Americans live east of the point, and the other half west of it, however, this is actually a property of the median center of US population, which is not weighted by geographic distance and lies in Gibson County, Indiana. Nearly 79% of the overall southerly movement happened between 19.

Īfter moving roughly 600 mi (966 km) west by south during the 19th century, the shift in the mean center of population during the 20th century was less pronounced, moving 324 mi (521 km) west and 101 mi (163 km) south. More specifically, this calculation is called the mean center of population. The center of population is the point at which an imaginary, weightless, rigid, and flat (no elevation effects) surface representation of the 50 states (or 48 conterminous states for calculations made prior to 1960) and the District of Columbia would balance if weights of identical size were placed on it so that each weight represented the location of one person. Census Bureau is that of a balance point. The concept of the center of population as used by the U.S. The mean center of the United States population is determined by the United States Census Bureau from the results of each national census.

Us population density map 1850