Demographics of Massachusetts

has an estimated population of 7.2 million as of 2025 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This represents a 1.8% increase in population from the 2020 census, when the population was 7.029 million. Currently, Massachusetts is the sixteenth most populous U.S. state.
Massachusetts has seen both population increases and decreases in recent years. For example, while some Bay Staters are leaving, others are moving there including European, Asian, Hispanic, African, Middle Eastern, North American, Australian, and Pacific Islander immigrants. Massachusetts in 2020 included 1.2 million foreign-born residents.
Most Bay Staters live within a 60-mile radius of the State House on Beacon Hill, often called Greater Boston: the City of Boston, neighboring cities and towns, the North Shore, South Shore, the northern, western, and southern suburbs, and most of southeastern and central Massachusetts. Eastern Massachusetts is more urban than Western Massachusetts, which is primarily rural, save for the cities of Springfield, Chicopee, Holyoke, and Northampton, which serve as centers of population density in the Pioneer Valley of the Connecticut River. The center of population of Massachusetts is located in Middlesex County, in the town of Natick.

Population

The total population is 7,154,084, making it the 16th most populous state as of 2025 estimates. Massachusetts has a density of 895 people per square mile, making it the third most dense of the fifty states.
The following additional demographic statistics are taken from the U.S. Census Bureau and associated estimates.

Age

The median age is 40.3 years. There are 5,645,986 people 18 years or older.
The population's age is distributed as follows.

Age	Percent	Totals
0–9	10.1%	702,092
10–19	12%	840,926
20–29	13.9%	970,145
30–39	13.7%	953,963
40–49	12.1%	847,226
50–59	13.3%	928,751
60–69	12.7%	885,484
70–79	8%	559,867
80+	4.2%	293,520

The state's population is 49% male and 51% female; the total sex ratio of Massachusetts is 94.3 male/100 female.

Health indicators

In 2020, the average life expectancy was 79.0 years old, which was the fifth-highest in the US.
The majority of deaths in Massachusetts are attributable to cancer, as of the CDC's 2023 data. Other major causes of death in the state are heart disease, COVID-19, accidents, and chronic lower respiratory diseases.
In 2021, Massachusetts's age-adjusted death rate was 721.4 deaths per 100,000 residents.

Birth rate

In 2021, the fertility rate in Massachusetts was 49 per 1,000 women aged 15–44, the fourth-lowest in the US. Data from the American Community Survey 2022, which includes women ages 15–50, suggests a slightly lower fertility rate.
People who gave birth in the past year, as of 2022 data, in Massachusetts were primarily in the 30–35 age range or in the 35–39 age range.
Of births recorded by 2021 data, 31.8% were delivered via Cesarean section.

Ancestry

According to the 2015–2019 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, the largest ancestry groups in Massachusetts are:

Ancestry	Percentage of Massachusetts population	Percentage of United States population	Difference
Irish	19.77%	9.71%	+10.06pp
Italian	12.27%	5.14%	+7.13pp
English	9.20%	7.24%	+1.96pp
French	5.90%	2.34%	+3.56pp
German	5.67%	13.25%	-7.58pp
Polish	4.40%	2.80%	+1.60pp
Portuguese	4.07%	0.42%	+3.65pp
American	3.81%	6.24%	-2.43pp
French Canadian	3.75%	0.64%	+3.11pp
Sub-Saharan African	2.25%	1.15%	+1.09pp
Scottish	2.14%	1.66%	+0.47pp
West Indian	2.04%	0.92%	+1.12pp
Swedish	1.55%	1.15%	+0.40pp
Russian	1.46%	0.80%	+0.66pp
European	1.26%	1.66%	-0.40pp
Brazilian	1.25%	0.14%	+1.11pp
Greek	1.16%	0.39%	+0.77pp
Arab	1.05%	0.62%	+0.43pp
Lithuanian	0.65%	0.19%	+0.46pp
Canadian	0.64%	0.20%	+0.44pp
Scotch-Irish	0.63%	0.93%	-0.30pp
British	0.56%	0.60%	-0.03pp
Dutch	0.56%	1.19%	-0.63pp
Norwegian	0.54%	1.35%	-0.81pp
Eastern European	0.54%	0.27%	+0.27pp

Massachusetts has the most Irish descendants of any state in the country and the fourth-most Italian descendent state in the country in percentage of total population. Irish Americans are mostly concentrated in the eastern and southeastern parts of the state; the South Shore region has an Irish-descendent population above 40%.
Massachusetts has the most Moroccans, Brazilians, and Ugandans of any state in the country in percentage of total population. Massachusetts also has large communities of people of Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic descent; Armenian, Turkish, Lebanese, Syrian, Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and Egyptian descent; and Italian and Spanish descent. Other influential ethnicities are Greek Americans, Lithuanian Americans, Polish Americans, German Americans and French Americans. Massachusetts "Yankees," of colonial English ancestry, still have a strong presence. French Canadian Americans form a significant part of the population in central and western Massachusetts, while Polish Americans are prevalent in the Springfield area and English Americans are common in the rural areas of western Massachusetts.
Boston's largest immigrant groups are from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and China. Lowell, in the northeast of the state, is home to a large Cambodian community, second in the country only to the concentration of Cambodians in Long Beach, California. Massachusetts also has the fastest growing population of South Asians, including Indian people, who are concentrated in such areas of Greater Boston as Shrewsbury, Woburn, Malden, Quincy, Somerville, and Cambridge. Most of them have immigrated to work in medicine, business, engineering, computer science, and finance. There is a flux of Indians immigrating for higher education.
Massachusetts has one of the largest lusophone populations in North America. It has the largest Cape Verdean population and the second-largest Portuguese population of any state in the United States, and as a percentage of population is second to only Rhode Island for both ethnic groups. Fall River and New Bedford on the south coast have large populations of Portuguese, Brazilian, and Cape Verdean heritage, all of which are also prevalent in the Taunton and Brockton areas. There is a growing Brazilian population in the Boston area.
Although a number of the Native American people in New England died in King Philip's War of 1675 or fled the region, some remained. For example, the Wampanoag tribe maintains at reservations at Aquinnah; at Grafton, on Martha's Vineyard; and at Mashpee, on Cape Cod. The Nipmuck maintain two state-recognized reservations in the central part of the state. Many Wampanoags and other native people live outside reservations.

Race	Percentage of Massachusetts population	Percentage of United States population
White	68.8%	60.9%
White	67.0%	57.7%
Hispanic	13.0%	19.1%
Black	7.1%	12.2%
Asian	7.2%	5.9%
Native Americans	0.3%	1.0%
Hawaiians & Pacific Islanders	0.0%	0.2%
Two or more races	10.7%	12.5%

Birth data

Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.

Race	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
White	45,046	44,542	43,651	42,135	40,773	39,663	39,219	37,357	39,817	37,682	36,028
Black	9,178	9,276	9,288	6,873	6,953	6,826	6,850	6,580	6,674	7,125	7,300
Asian	6,460	6,599	6,713	6,422	6,067	6,183	6,228	5,826	5,471	5,630	5,268
American Indian	157	151	141	80	86	76	98	71	63	57	59
Hispanic	12,376	12,722	13,015	13,181	13,609	13,810	14,142	14,080	14,551	15,383	15,700
Total	71,788	71,908	71,492	71,317	70,702	69,109	69,117	66,428	69,137	68,584	67,093

Since 2016, data for births of White Hispanic origin are not collected, but included in one Hispanic group; persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race.