Demographics of Washington, D.C.

Its role as the capital leads people to forget that approximately one-third of the District of Columbia's population was born in the city.

Like numerous other border and northern cities in the first half of the 20th century, the District of Columbia received many black migrants from the South in the Great Migration.

In the postwar era, the percentage of African Americans in the District steadily increased as its total population declined as a result of suburbanization, supported by federal highway construction, and white flight.

The populations of each place were counted separately from that of the City of Washington until Alexandria was returned to Virginia in 1846, and until the District of Columbia was formed into a single entity in 1871.

In 1860, directly before the Civil War, the District had about 75,000 residents,[11] far smaller than such major historical port cities as New York at 800,000 or Philadelphia at more than 500,000.

[12] It is notable that the District of Columbia had a large African-American population even before the Civil War, and most were free people of color, not slaves.

[11] The District of Columbia's population continued to grow throughout the late nineteenth century as Irish-American, German-American, and Jewish-American immigrant communities formed in downtown areas.

In response to the Great Depression in the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation expanded the bureaucracy in the District of Columbia.

World War II further increased government activity and defense contracting, adding to the number of federal employees in the capital.

Following social unrest and riots in the 1960s, plus increasing crime, by 1980, the District of Columbia had lost one-quarter of its population.

[24] The Washington Metropolitan Area, which includes the surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia, is the eighth-largest in the United States, with more than five million residents.

When combined with Baltimore and its suburbs, the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area has a population exceeding eight million residents, the fourth-largest in the country.

[28] Major sources of immigration have included El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, China, Jamaica, India, the U.K., the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines.

[17] Notable African American neighborhoods include, Shaw, LeDroit Park, Sixteenth Street Heights and Anacostia, among others.

In general, African Americans show a strong concentration in areas east of Rock Creek park, notably so in the city's Northeast and Southeast quadrants.

Many Black residents in D.C. have moved back to Southern cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Birmingham, Memphis, San Antonio and Jackson.

Despite decline in the District, regional Black population growth continues due to robust migration from the Caribbean, Africa, and other parts of the United States.

Other notable groups include those from Egypt, Morocco, South Africa, Cameroon and Kenya, who tend to congregate in the regions suburban areas, in contrast to the Ethiopian and Somali communities, which show a decided urban concentration in areas such as Shaw, the U Street Corridor and Adams Morgan.

[37] According to a study by George Mason University, there are an estimated 83,400 Caribbean born people living in the greater Washington, DC area.

The DC area has one of the largest Jamaican and anglophone Caribbean populations in the country, though many West Indians are facing the same effects of gentrification as African Americans, leading to a slow migration to the suburbs, especially to Prince George's County.

[41] Though, Jamaicans, Cubans and anglophone Caribbeans represent the majority of West Indians in Washington, there has been a significant growth in the number of Haitians and Dominicans in recent decades, who are more thus more evenly distributed throughout the city and region, and have lower citizenship and education rates than longer settled groups.

[41] While the White population of DC represents 43.6% of the total, part of this grouping includes a number of European-born residents, who range from expats to dual citizens.

A near majority of DC Hispanics are from Northern Central America and Mexico, with Salvadorans making up the largest group in the city and the metropolitan area as a whole.

Indeed, there has been a significant in-migration of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans from those respective islands and nearby regions, since the early 2000s particularly from New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Baltimore, due to the area's strong job market.

[54] In general, Puerto Ricans tend to have higher English language proficiency and interethnic marriage rates, than other Hispanic groups.

Traditionally, Chinese immigrants congregated in what is now Penn Quarter, but most Chinese-Americans have relocated to nearby Rockville, Maryland, leaving mostly older residents in what is left of DC's Chinatown.

[60] 2.2% speak an Asian or Pacific Island language at home including Chinese (0.8%), Tagalog (0.3%), Korean (0.2%), Japanese (0.1%), and Vietnamese (0.1%).

A 2007 report found that about one-third of the District of Columbia residents are functionally illiterate, compared to a national rate of about one in five.

[73] A 2005 Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy study estimated that 8.1% of the population of DC identified as LGB, the highest in the United States.

[75] The Pew Research Center 2014 Religious Landscape Study found that between 17% and 25% of the adult population of the District of Columbia are non-theistic.