2020 Census Results Are IN!
THERE ARE MORE OF US ON CAPE COD AND THE ISLANDS
By Dean Lundgren, President, Davisville Civic Association
By law, the United States is required to have a national census every ten years. The results of the census are now available. For various reasons, including the ongoing pandemic, there are always challenges to the accuracy of the data. In any case, here’s a summary of 2020 census results related specifically to Cape Cod and the Islands.
While we all suspected this due to the heavier road traffic this summer, more of us are now living here; and in some locations, many more!
In the last decade:
Nantucket’s population is up 40.1%
Martha’s Vineyard’s population is up 24.6%
Cape Cod, on a much larger base, is up 6.1%
While experts are not sure of all the reasons for this growth, several reasons are mentioned, including:
The impact of the pandemic with more people choosing to move from cities to work from home on the Cape
Second homeowners shifting to use their vacation homes as their primary residences
Falmouth’s population increased 3.1% to 32,517.
The Outer Cape towns, which are the least populated, experienced the largest percentage increases:
Wellfleet was up 29.7% to a total of 3,555
Provincetown increased 22.5% to a total of 2,454
The largest town on Cape Cod, Barnstable, with 48,912 residents increased 8.2%
The Cape has become somewhat more diverse with the white population decreasing from 91.4% to 85.0%, with Barnstable’s population the most diverse with a white population of 76.2%.
58% of housing units across the Cape are occupied on a full-time basis, up from 53% in 2010. Of the 164,885 housing units on the Cape, 69,252 are unoccupied for most of the year.
Sandwich, which is the Cape town closest to Boston, not surprisingly, has the highest percentage of homes occupied for the majority of the year at 82%. The Upper Cape region (Falmouth, Bourne, Sandwich, and Mashpee) has 72% of its housing units occupied year-round.
Well, that’s enough numbers for now!!