The demographics of Virginia are the various elements used to describe the population of the Commonwealth of Virginia and are studied by various government and non-government organizations. Virginia is the 12th-most populous state in the United States with over residentsResident Population Data . United States Census Bureau. 23 December 2010. Retrieved 2011-03-25. and is the 35th largest in area.2010 Census State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved 2011-03-25.
Population of Virginia As of the 2010 United States census, Virginia has a reported population , which is an increase , or 3.6%, from a previous estimate in 2007 and an increase , or 13.0%, since the year 2000. This includes an increase from net migration of into the Commonwealth from 2000 to 2007. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of , and migration within the country produced a net increase of . Also in 2009, 6.7% of Virginia's population were reported as under five years old, 23.4% under eighteen, and 12.1% were senior citizens-65+. The center of population of Virginia is located in Goochland County outside of Richmond.
Historical population
Vital statistics Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number. + Live Births by Single Race/Ethnicity of Mother Race 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 White 59,885 (58.0%) 59,244 (57.3%) 57,469 (56.1%) 55,540 (55.3%) 54,798 (54.9%) 52,997 (54.4%) 51,120 (53.9%) 52,069 (54.3%) 51,085 (53.4%) 49,171 (53.1%) 49,182 (52.3%) Black 22,828 (22.1%) 23,029 (22.3%) 20,782 (20.3%) 21,101 (21.0%) 20,860 (20.9%) 20,339 (20.9%) 19,622 (20.7%) 19,170 (20.0%) 18,543 (19.4%) 17,607 (19.0%) 17,318 (18.4%) Asian 8,356 (8.1%) 8,535 (8.1%) 7,909 (7.7%) 7,670 (7.6%) 7,625 (7.6%) 7,524 (7.7%) 6,945 (7.3%) 6,956 (7.2%) 7,140 (7.5%) 6,810 (7.4%) 7,123 (7.5%) Pacific Islander ... ... 131 (0.1%) 125 (0.1%) 103 (0.1%) 127 (0.1%) 116 (0.1%) 103 (0.1%) 114 (0.1%) 115 (0.1%) 131 (0.1%) American Indian 255 (0.2%) 254 (0.2%) 152 (0.1%) 155 (0.2%) 157 (0.2%) 144 (0.1%) 146 (0.1%) 134 (0.1%) 151 (0.2%) 111 (0.1%) 117 (0.1%) Hispanic (any race) 13,490 (13.1%) 13,930 (13.5%) 14,230 (13.9%) 13,999 (13.9%) 14,397 (14.4%) 14,442 (14.8%) 14,806 (15.6%) 15,044 (15.7%) 15,943 (16.7%) 16,222 (17.5%) 17,296 (18.4%) Total 103,300 (100%) 103,303 (100%) 102,460 (100%) 100,391 (100%) 99,843 (100%) 97,429 (100%) 94,749 (100%) 95,825 (100%) 95,630 (100%) 92,649 (100%) 94,054 (100%)
Since 2016, data for births of White Hispanic origin are not collected, but included in one Hispanic group; persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race.
Race and ethnicity
+Virginia – Racial and ethnic compositionRace / Ethnicity (NH = Non-Hispanic)Pop 1980Pop 1990Pop 2000Pop 2010 Pop 2020% 1980% 1990% 2000% 2010% 2020White alone (NH)4,179,4534,701,6504,965,6375,186,4505,058,36378.17%75.99%70.15%64.82%58.60%Black or African American alone (NH)998,1661,153,1331,376,3781,523,7041,578,09018.67%18.64%19.44%19.04%18.28%Native American or Alaska Native alone (NH)9,45414,34718,59620,67919,0800.18%0.23%0.26%0.26%0.22%Asian alone (NH)66,102154,183259,277436,298610,6121.24%2.49%3.66%5.45%7.07%Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander alone (NH)x included in the Asian category in the 1980 Censusx included in the Asian category in the 1990 Census3,3805,0616,195xx0.05%0.06%0.07%Other race alone (NH)13,7753,75711,68515,33845,3940.26%0.06%0.17%0.19%0.53%Mixed race or Multiracial (NH)x not an option in the 1980 Censusx not an option in the 1990 Census114,022181,669404,910xx1.61%2.27%4.69%Hispanic or Latino (any race)79,868160,288329,540631,825908,7491.49%2.59%4.66%7.90%10.53%Total5,346,8186,187,3587,078,5158,001,0248,631,393 100.00%100.00%100.00%100.00%100.00%
Racial composition 1990 2000 2010 2020 White 77.4% 72.3% 68.6% 60.3% Black 18.8% 19.6% 19.4% 18.6% Asian 2.6% 3.7% 5.5% 7.1% Native 0.2% 0.3% 0.4% 0.5% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander – 0.1% 0.1% 0.1% Other race 0.9% 2.0% 3.2% 5.2% Two or more races – 2.0% 2.9% 8.2% The five largest reported ancestry groups in Virginia are: African American (19.6%), German (11.7%), American (11.4%), English (11.1%), and Irish (9.8%). Most of those claiming to be of "American" ancestry are actually of English descent, but have family that has been in the country for so long, in many cases since the early seventeenth century, that they choose to identify simply as "American".Sharing the Dream: White Males in a Multicultural America By Dominic J. Pulera.Reynolds Farley, 'The New Census Question about Ancestry: What Did It Tell Us?', Demography, Vol. 28, No. 3 (August 1991), pp. 414, 421.Stanley Lieberson and Lawrence Santi, 'The Use of Nativity Data to Estimate Ethnic Characteristics and Patterns', Social Science Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1985), pp. 44-6.Stanley Lieberson and Mary C. Waters, 'Ethnic Groups in Flux: The Changing Ethnic Responses of American Whites', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 487, No. 79 (September 1986), pp. 82–86.Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 36. Most of Virginia's Black population are descended from enslaved Africans who worked its tobacco, cotton, and hemp plantations. Initially, these slaves came from west central Africa, primarily Angola. During the eighteenth century, however, about half of them were derived from various ethnicities located in the Niger Delta region of modern-day Nigeria. With continued immigration to Virginia of other European groups and the 19th-century sales of tens of thousands of enslaved Africans from Virginia to the Deep South, the percent of enslaved Africans fell from once being half of the total population. By 1860 slaves comprised 31% of the state's population of .
In colonial Virginia the majority of free people of color were descended from marriages or relationships of white men (servants or free) and black women (slave, servant or free), reflecting the fluid relationships among working people. Many free black families were well-established and headed by landowners by the Revolution. From 1782 to 1818, a wave of slaveholders inspired by the Revolutionary ideals of equality freed slaves, until the legislature made manumissions more difficult. Some African Americans freed were those whose fathers were white masters, while others were freed for service. By 1860 there were people of color (black or mulatto, as classified in the census) in Virginia. Over the decades, many had gathered in the cities of Richmond and Petersburg where there were more job opportunities. Others were landowners who had working farms, or found acceptance from neighbors in the frontier areas of Virginia.
The twentieth-century Great Migration of blacks from the rural South to the urban North reduced Virginia's black population to about 20%. Today, African-Americans are concentrated in the eastern and southern Tidewater and Piedmont regions where plantation agriculture was the most dominant. The western mountains were settled primarily by people of heavily Scots-Irish ancestry. There are also sizable numbers of people of German descent in the northwestern mountains and Shenandoah Valley.
Because of recent immigration in the late 20th century and early 21st century, there are rapidly growing populations from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, especially in Northern Virginia. Northern Virginia, which is a part of the DC metropolitan area, is one of the most diverse regions in the country. Virginia has one of the largest Salvadoran populations in the US, the vast majority of which is concentrated in Northern Virginia. Northern Virginia also has the largest Vietnamese population on the East Coast, with about 48,000 Vietnamese statewide as of 2007, their major wave of immigration followed the Vietnam War. The Hampton Roads area in southeastern Virginia, though it lags far behind Northern Virginia in diversity, is the second most populous in the state compared to other metro areas; aside from 'native' blacks and whites, Hampton Roads only has large populations of Filipinos, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans. The Hampton Roads area has the highest percentage of Puerto Ricans of any metropolitan area in the Southern US outside Florida, and also has a sizable Filipino population with about 45,000 in the area, many of whom have ties to the U.S. Navy. As of 2005, 6.1% of Virginians are Hispanic and 5.2% are Asian. Virginia also continues to be home to eight Native American tribes recognized by the state, though all lack federal recognition status. Most Native American groups are located in the Tidewater region.
Romani people are present in Virginia.
Languages The Piedmont region is known for its dialect's strong influence on Southern American English. While a more homogenized American English is found in urban areas, various accents are also used, including the Tidewater accent, the Old Virginia accent, Appalachian English, and the anachronistic Elizabethan of Tangier Island.
Spanish, French, German and Korean are also spoken in the state.
Native American tribes spoke dialects of Algic, Iroquoian or Siouan.
Religion
Religion (2008)Christian76%Baptist27%Roman Catholic 11%Methodist8%Lutheran2%Other Christian28%Judaism1%Islam2.6%Buddhism1%Hinduism1%Unaffiliated18%
Virginia is predominantly Christian and Protestant; Baptists are the largest single group with 27% of the population as of 2008. Baptist denominational groups in Virginia include the Baptist General Association of Virginia, with about 1,400 member churches, which supports both the Southern Baptist Convention and the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; and the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia with more than 500 affiliated churches, which supports the Southern Baptist Convention.
Roman Catholics are the second-largest religious group, and the group which grew the most in the 1990s. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington includes most of Northern Virginia's Catholic churches, while the Diocese of Richmond covers the rest. The Virginia Conference is the regional body of the United Methodist Church. The Virginia Synod is responsible for the congregations of the Lutheran Church. The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, Southern Virginia, and Southwestern Virginia support the various Episcopal churches. In November 2006, 15 conservative Episcopal churches voted to split from the Diocese of Virginia over its ordination of openly gay bishops and clergy; these churches continue to claim affiliation with the larger Anglican Communion through other bodies outside the United States. Though Virginia law allows parishioners to determine their church's affiliation, the diocese claims the secessionist churches' properties. The resulting property law case is a test for Episcopal churches nationwide.