Kansas City, Missouri, is getting (slightly) whiter

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White flight is so deeply stitched into the fabric of Kansas City that they almost made a museum out of it a few years back. Census numbers indicate that between 1990 and 2000, about 28,000 whites left Kansas City, Missouri. Between 2000 and 2010, another 2,200 left the city. 

But data in the Census Bureau’s recently released American Community Survey indicates a reversal of that trend. Between 2010 and 2014, the white population in KCMO grew by 11,355.

The upswing is not unique to Kansas City; Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baltimore, Nashville and a few other large cities also are seeing a reversal of decades-long white decline. 

In an analysis of the trend, the Brookings Institute notes: 

Some of these gains are certainly related to the recent uptick in the attractiveness of cities to young adults and retirees. However, white migration back to the city is not necessarily the main reason these gains exist: The large millennial and baby boom generations are inflating young adult and retirement age populations practically everywhere across the nation due to what demographers call cohort replacement. Still, these new numbers suggest that many big cities are sharing in the national gains of whites in these age groups.

Read the full analysis, with links to the study, here.