The Nation - News from Oct. 5, 1988

The combination of continued strong immigration and an increase in the natural growth of the U.S. population pushed the United States past 245 million people, the Census Bureau reported. As of Jan. 1, the nation was home to 245,110,000 people, the bureau said, up from 242,825,000 a year earlier. Contributing were natural growth of 1.7 million last year, resulting from 3.8 million births minus 2.1 million deaths. In addition, there were an estimated 600,000 immigrant arrivals in this country, the bureau said. The nation’s population has been growing at around 1% annually since about 1960, the agency reported.