Population of Boston topped 600,000 in 2007 according to revised estimate
As expected, the City of Boston’s challenge of the 2007 population estimate by the United States Census Bureau was a partial success. The initial estimate was 599,351 – while the 2007 American Community Survey guesstimated 613,117 – and the revised population estimate for Boston in 2007 is 608,352. Boston had asked for the revised estimate to be 619,250, but the Bureau nixed that request.
According to the Boston Globe Stephanie Ebbert, the Census accepted a higher number of “college students and other people who live in group housing” than it had allowed in the original estimate. In a telephone call today Census Bureau demographer Greg Harper added that the Bureau also accepted a higher number of new units than the original population estimate had assumed. Harper declined to disclose the composition of the group quarter population that the City of Boston used in its argument. The Globe article also doesn’t elaborate on how much of the revision is made up of students in college dorms and how much of public housing dwellers.
