Immigration is the largest contributor to Missouri’s growing population, according to census data analyzed by MU Extension .

“Natural change” is the difference between births and deaths in a population. In the last four years, there were more deaths than births in Missouri, resulting in a population decrease of 11,000 people.

However, due to migration from other states and other countries, Missouri’s population grew 1.5% during that period.

“Missouri, as well as some of our border states, including Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee, saw natural decreases, but we made that up in immigration,” said Luke Dietterle, regional economic development specialist with MU Extension. “We had an increase of over 90,000 individuals and that’s entirely driven by migration both from other states to Mis

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