Since 2000, New Mexico's population has grown 17%, compared with 43% across neighboring states. Population growth reflects, in part, where people choose to live and work, so New Mexico's slower growth suggests it has been less successful than its neighbors at attracting and keeping residents.

Has the population gap persisted in recent years? Yes. Since 2010, New Mexico's population has grown 3%, compared with 20% across neighboring states. Most of the gap has opened in the past 15 years, not in the distant past, and New Mexico's growth has slowed even further relative to its neighbors. While stagnant growth avoids the strain that rapid growth puts on infrastructure, it may signal underlying economic challenges and an aging population.

In this decade so far, the region grew 6%, and New Mexico grew a third of one percent. We are a flat line while everyone nearby climbs.

Last year, New Mexico's population fell by 1,276 people. It was the only one of the six states compared to lose residents. One year does not make a trend, but it is a change from recent years of slow growth and worth watching.

Are more people moving into New Mexico than out? No. About one more person per 1,000 residents left New Mexico for another state than moved here from one. Neighboring states, by contrast, gained nearly two people per 1,000 from domestic moves that year. This measurement counts only moves between states, so it leaves out international migration, births, and deaths.

New Mexico is the only state among the six where funerals outnumber baby showers. This means that if not a single person moved out, the state would still be shrinking.

New Mexico's fertility rate is the lowest among neighboring states. It has fallen about 25% since 2000. Fewer strollers now means a smaller workforce in the 2040s, as anyone who will be working in 2045 is already born or will be within a few years. This part of our future is largely set. Migration can still add or subtract workers, but a smaller generation is harder to offset.

One in five New Mexico children lives in poverty — the region's worst, against about one in seven in Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah. Child poverty today shows up in every other category on this scoreboard tomorrow.

Kids make up about 21% of New Mexicans — the region's smallest share, and shrinking. That's the pipeline of future students, workers and families thinning out.

New Mexico has the smallest share of residents between ages 18 and 64, of the six states studied. This group makes up most of the workforce and pays most income and payroll taxes. A smaller working-age share means fewer workers and taxpayers for each resident, including children and retirees, which can pull down per-person measures like income and economic output.

Since 2000, the neighboring states' public school enrollment grew on average 28%. New Mexico's fell 3%. Schools count every child at the start of every school year. This is New Mexico's population story reflected in homerooms.

Nearly one in four New Mexico children under age five live in households below the federal poverty line, the highest rate among neighboring states. Early childhood is a critical period for brain development, so growing up in poverty during these years can affect learning and health later in life.