A coal truck drives out of downtown Welch, W.Va., Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2011. Coal brought a large population to the McDowell County in the 1940s. Now the population is shrinking and the county suffers from unemployment and poverty. Now, here as in one-fourth of all U.S. counties, West Virginia's graying residents are slowly dying off. Hit by an aging population and a poor economy, a near-record level of U.S. counties is experiencing more deaths than births in their communities, a phenomenon demographers call "natural decrease." (AP Photo/Jon C. Hancock)
Read the article: Census estimates show 1 in 4 U.S. counties are dying
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