Here's Where More People Are Dying Than Being Born

We've been looking at what cities immigrants are flocking to. But international migration is just one part of the story of population change.

Another part is natural increase - how many births there are, offset by how many deaths there are. This map, using data from the U.S. Census, shows the number of births minus number of deaths per 1,000 people in each county in the U.S. that happened in the year between July 1, 2012 and July 1, 2013. Counties in red had more deaths than births, and counties in blue had more births than deaths:

A wide swath of Appalachia, stretching from Western Pennsylvania through Virginia and West Virginia and into Tennessee stands out as a large area where deaths outnumbered births. Similarly, Northern Michigan and Wisconsin suffered a similar fate.

Meanwhile, Alaska and most of the West saw plenty more births than deaths.

Since we're looking at natural change - the difference between births and deaths - here are maps showing those two components on their own. Here's births per 1,000 people:

And here's deaths per 1,000 people: