Demographics From The 2000 Census
In the 2000 Census, Italian Americans make up the largest ancestral group in Staten Island and Long Island, followed by Irish Americans and Polish Americans. Manhattan's leading ancestry group is Dominicans since the 2000 census, followed by Irish Americans, then Italian Americans and more than 200 nationalities are counted, plus comparably large numbers of residents with Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Russian and Swedish ancestry. Albany and southeast-central New York are heavily Irish American and Italian American. In Buffalo and western New York, German Americans are the largest group along with Polish Americans and other Slavic nationalities; in the northern tip of the state, French Canadians. New York State has a higher number of Italian-Americans than any other U.S. state. New York City is also said to be home to two million of Italian descent alone. NYC was once called the largest German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Polish and Russian communities outside their representative countries of origin.
Sometimes classified an ethnic group by some demographers and sometimes as a religious identity (Judaism), American Jews of various nationalities and various denominations, but most are American-born, are a major social presence in New York. An estimated 1 to 2 million alone in New York City and another 1 to 1.5 million live in surrounding areas, sometimes New York is referred to as the "world's largest Jewish city" since the mid-19th century. The first wave of Jewish immigrants in New York are of Sephardic origin, a scant 10,000 from Holland, Italy, Spain and Portugal in the 17th and 18th centuries, but in the 19th century more newcomers were first German and finally in the early 20th century millions from Eastern Europe like Poland and Russia, both of Ashkenazi origin. In the late 20th century, a smaller wave of Russian Jews and Ukrainian Jews settled in the Brighton Beach section in Brooklyn, and New York has many Israeli-American residents.
The intense development, urbanization and suburban sprawl of New York City makes it the most populated region in the U.S., an estimated 20 to 30 million in the eight-state Megalopolis stretching 500 miles from Boston to Washington DC, with New York City in the middle has 15 million residents in a 100 mile radius including Philadelphia (1.5 million in its' city limits), northern New Jersey and Connecticut. The bulk of New York's population lives within two hours of New York City. According to the July 1, 2004 Census Bureau Estimate, New York City and its six closest New York State satellite counties (Suffolk, Nassau, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange) have a combined population of 12,626,200 people, or 65.67% of the state's population.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 13.61% of the population aged 5 and older speak Spanish at home, while 2.04% speak Chinese (including Cantonese and Mandarin), 1.65% Italian, and 1.23% Russian . In age demographics: 6.5% of New York's population were under 5 years of age, 24.7% under 18, and 12.9% were 65 or older. Females made up 51.8% of the population. New York state has a fluctating population growth rate, it has experienced some shrinkage in the 1970s and 1980s, but milder growth in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of New York