Twenty-five years later, who remembers the Sept. 11 attacks?
Almost one-third of the country doesn’t, because they weren’t born yet. A Social Explorer analysis of 2020-24 American Community Survey data (the latest available) finds that approximately 104 million people, or 31.1 percent of the U.S. population, who were younger than 25 during the survey period would have been born after the attacks.
It should come as no surprise that Utah, traditionally the state with the youngest median age, would have the largest percentage of post-Sept. 11 babies, at 39.4 percent of its population. Texas, with the third-youngest population (by median age), was a distant No. 2, at 34.7 percent of residents younger than 25 years old. And North Dakota, with the fifth-youngest median age, had 34.6 percent of people born after the attacks, ranking it third.
Drilling down to the county level with Social Explorer’s data and tools allows for further analysis of places with higher proportions of people that didn’t experience Sept. 11 during their lifetimes. Most of these counties have young populations, and of the eight counties where 50 percent or more of the population is younger than 25, at least half are home to universities. Madison County, Idaho, where 66.3 percent of the population would have had no memory of the attacks, is home to Brigham Young University-Idaho. Likewise, Lexington City, Va. (55.3 percent), and Radford City, Va. (55.2 percent) host universities.
No metropolitan statistical area (MSA) had a majority of residents born after Sept. 11. However, the places with the highest percentages of post-Sept. 11 births among the 1,002 places studied were also in states with low median ages and in college towns. Among metros (excluding the 558 micropolitan statistical areas, which include populations between 10,000 and 50,000, due to small sample sizes), 48.3 percent of the population was born after Sept. 11 in Provo, Utah, home to Brigham Young University. It was trailed by Logan, Utah (47.9 percent, home to Utah State University), and Manhattan, Kan. (45.2 percent, home to Kansas State University).
Just as states and communities with younger populations had fewer residents who were alive during the attacks, older parts of the country generally had more people who would have been alive in 2001. In Maine, which has the oldest median age of any state in the nation, only 26.1 percent of the population was born after Sept. 11. New Hampshire, the state with the second-oldest median age, trailed with 26.9 percent of residents younger than 25. Florida, the fifth-oldest, reported that only 27.6 percent of its population was born after the attacks.
Florida also ranked high among counties where most residents were likely to have been alive on Sept. 11, 2001. Sumter County, Fla., one of the oldest counties in the U.S., had 90 percent of its residents alive during the attacks. Jefferson County, Wash. ranked second with 85 percent of residents age 25 or older, followed by Charlotte County, Fla. at 83.3 percent.
Among MSAs, Florida claimed all three top spots for the largest share of residents age 25 or older. The Villages, a planned community aimed at people older than 55, only had 10 percent of its population born after 2001. Punta Gorda (16.7 percent) and Homosassa Springs (20 percent) had the second- and third-highest percentages of residents who were alive in September 2001.
Meanwhile, the analysis shows that the communities closest to the sites of the Sept. 11 attacks have a variety of age profiles. The New York-Newark-Jersey City metro reported 29.4 percent of the population born after 2001, ranking the area 738th of 1,002 places studied. The Virginia section of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metro which includes the Pentagon ranked 419th, with 32 percent of its residents born after Sept. 11. The Somerset, Penn., micropolitan statistical area, where one of the hijacked planes crashed, ranked 938th, with only 25.1 percent of its residents born after the attacks.
Related data available through Social Explorer:
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Census Bureau, American Community Survey
Census Bureau, Population Estimates
Census Bureau, Decennial Census
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