Philadelphia is a significantly different city than it was 75 years ago, with a smarter and more diverse population but fewer residents overall, writes Meir Rinde for Billy Penn at WHYY.

According to the Pew Charitable Trust’s annual look at the State of the City, in 1950, the city reached a high of almost 2.1 million residents — the number that had been shrinking until it reached the lowest point of 1.52 million in 2000. Since then, the population has started to slowly climb again to 1.58 million in 2020, but the city once again lost around 22,000 residents from 2021 to 2022.

The city has also undergone a transformation in diversity. In 1950, more than 80 percent of Philadelphians were white. Today, about 3-in-10 Philadelphians identify as non-Hispanic white, 39 percent are Black, 16 percent are Hispanic or Latino, and 8 percent are Asian.

Philadelphia has also become a city of brainiacs over the years. From the 1950s to today, the median number of years of schooling has gone from a median of nine years to now just 5 percent of residents having less than a ninth-grade education.

Additionally, over 36 percent of people over 25 have bachelor’s degrees, the highest percentage on record.

Read more about how Philadelphia changed over the last 75 years in Billy Penn at WHYY.

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