Alabama’s 15 Fastest Shrinking Counties

More than 75 years ago, writing in The Atlantic magazine, an essayist named Arthur Morgan said that small American towns were “an orphan in an unfriendly world … despised, neglected, exploited, and robbed.”

His point was that a modern society had largely abandoned places that he contended were a vital fabric of American society. Populations were in rapid decline. 

Morgan said back in his 1942 essay, “The Community—The Seed Bed of Society,” that small towns had been “submerged by modern technology, commercialism, mass production, propaganda, and centralized government.”

Three quarters of a century later, American towns are still shrinking, according to latest Census data predictions. 

Many of these places are in crisis, facing economic decline, drug addiction, despair, while also being unable to replace an ageing population.

And Alabama’s small towns are no exception.  

Between 2010 and 2017, 45 of the state’s 67 counties saw a decrease in their population. Four of those counties saw a population loss of more than 10 percent over the same period. And while many of the state's largest counties are growing, small counties, mostly in the Black Belt are experiencing swift declines.

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