A New Method for Computing the Mean Center of Population of the United States

The mean center of population of the United States is a convenient location used to summarize the population distribution of the United States and how it changes over time. As computed by the U.S. Census Bureau, the center depends on an arbitrary choice of a map projection. We feel that this location should depend only on the population distribution and not on any choices made in representing the data of the distribution. This note discusses a method for computing this location that does not depend on any choices made and describes how the results of this method differ from those of the Census Bureau.