Georgia Overview

Georgia is a state in the Southeastern United States and was one of the original Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution. It was the last of the Thirteen Colonies to be established as a colony, in 1733. It was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788. It seceded from the Union on January 21, 1861 and was one of the original seven Confederate states. It was the last state readmitted to the Union, on July 15, 1870. Georgia is the ninth-largest state in the nation by population, with an estimated 9,544,750 residents as of July 1, 2007. It is also the third fastest-growing state in terms of numeric gain and fifth in terms of percent gain, adding 202,670 residents at a rate of 2.2%. From 2006 to 2007, Georgia had 18 counties among the nation’s 100 fastest-growing counties, the most of any state. Georgia is also known as the Peach State and the Empire State of the South. Atlanta is the most populous city, and the capital.

Georgia is bordered on the south by Florida; on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and South Carolina; on the west by Alabama and by Florida in the extreme southwest; and on the north by Tennessee and North Carolina. The northern part of the state is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mountain range in the vast mountain system of the Appalachians. The central piedmont extends from the foothills to the fall line, where the rivers cascade down in elevation to the continental coastal plain of the southern part of the state. The highest point in Georgia is Brasstown Bald, 4,784 feet (1,458 m); the lowest point is sea level.

With an area of 59,424 square miles (153,909 km²), Georgia is ranked 24th in size among the 50 U.S. states. Georgia is the largest state east of the Mississippi River in terms of land area, although it is the fourth largest (after Michigan, Florida, and Wisconsin) in total area, a term which includes expanses of water claimed as state territory.

Cities

Downtown Atlanta, Georgia

Savannah, Georgia

See also: Georgia census statistical areas

The largest city, Atlanta, is located in north-central Georgia, atop a ridge southeast of the Chattahoochee River. The Atlanta metropolitan area has a population of 5,138,223 (2006 census estimate), though the city proper has less than 500,000 people. The city is the central city of the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Gainesville, Ga.-Ala. combined statistical area.

The state of Georgia has twenty metropolitan and micropolitan areas with populations above fifty-thousand. In descending order, they are Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus,Savannah ,Athens, Macon, Gainesville, Albany, Dalton, Warner Robins, Valdosta, Brunswick, Rome, Hinesville, LaGrange, Statesboro, Dublin, Milledgeville, Waycross, and Calhoun.

Ten largest cities

• Atlanta - 498,109

• Augusta - 195,182

• Columbus - 188,660

• Savannah - 128,500

• Athens - 111,580

• Macon - 97,606

• Sandy Springs – 85,771

• Roswell - 79,334

• Albany - 76,939

• Johns Creek – 62,049

Demographics

Historical populations
Census	Pop.		%±
1790	82,548		—
1800	162,686		97.1%
1810	251,407		54.5%
1820	340,989		35.6%
1830	516,823		51.6%
1840	691,392		33.8%
1850	906,185		31.1%
1860	1,057,286		16.7%
1870	1,184,109		12.0%
1880	1,542,181		30.2%
1890	1,837,353		19.1%
1900	2,216,331		20.6%
1910	2,609,121		17.7%
1920	2,895,832		11.0%
1930	2,908,506		0.4%
1940	3,123,723		7.4%
1950	3,444,578		10.3%
1960	3,943,116		14.5%
1970	4,589,575		16.4%
1980	5,463,105		19.0%
1990	6,478,216		18.6%
2000	8,186,453		26.4%
Est. 2007	9,544,750		16.6%

In 2006, Georgia had an estimated population of 9,363,941 which was an increase of 231,388 from the previous year, and an increase of 1,177,125 since 2000. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 438,939 people (that is 849,414 births minus 410,475 deaths) and an increase from net migration of 606,673 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 228,415 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 378,258 people.

As of 2006, Georgia is the 9th most populous state. Its population has grown 44.5% (2,885,725) since 1990, making it one of the fastest-growing states in the country. Beginning with the 1990s, Georgia took over as the fastest-growing state in the South with a 26% population increase during the decade, surpassing its neighbor Florida which had held the title for every decade in the 20th century prior to the 90s. More than half of the state’s population lives in the Atlanta metro area. Nineteen Georgia counties were among the 100 fastest growing counties from 2004 to 2005. The center of population of Georgia is located in Butts County, in the city of Jackson.

Georgia Population Density Map

Race, language, and age

According to the U.S census, Georgia’s population is as follows: 62% White, 28.1% African-American, 2.1% Asian American, 1.2% mixed, and 6% are Hispanics or Latino (of any race). As of 2005, 90% of Georgia residents age 5 and older speak only English at home and 5.6% speak Spanish. French is the third most spoken language at 0.9%, followed by German at 0.8% and Vietnamese at 0.6%. As of 2004, 7.7% of its population was reported as under 5 years of age, 26.4% under 18, and 9.6% were 65 or older. Also as of 2004, females made up approximately 50.6% of the population and African Americans made up approximately 29.6%.

Historically, about half of Georgia’s population was composed of African Americans who, prior to the Civil War, were almost exclusively enslaved. The Great Migration of hundreds of thousands of blacks from the rural South to the industrial North from 1914-1970 reduced the African American population. This population has since increased, with some African Americans returning to the state for new job opportunities. Today, African Americans remain the most populous race in many rural counties in middle, east-central, southwestern, and Low Country Georgia, as well as in the city of Atlanta and in most of its suburbs. According to census estimates, Georgia ranks fourth among the states in terms of the percent of the total population that is African American.

Demographics of Georgia (csv)
By race	White	Black	AIAN*	Asian	NHPI*
2000 (total population)	68.34%	29.38%	0.66%	2.46%	0.12%
2000 (Hispanic only)	4.82%	0.39%	0.10%	0.05%	0.03%
2005 (total population)	67.00%	30.29%	0.67%	3.01%	0.14%
2005 (Hispanic only)	6.57%	0.43%	0.12%	0.07%	0.04%
Growth 2000–05 (total population)	8.65%	14.23%	11.72%	36.02%	25.41%
Growth 2000–05 (non-Hispanic only)	5.43%	14.12%	7.43%	35.82%	21.99%
Growth 2000–05 (Hispanic only)	50.99%	22.30%	36.34%	45.53%	36.55%
* AIAN is American Indian or Alaskan Native; NHPI is Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander

As of 2005, approximately 2.7% of Georgia’s population was Asian American. Georgia is the nation’s third-fastest growing area for Asians, behind only Nevada and North Carolina. Asian buying power in the state was $8.1 billion this year, up from $1.1 billion in 1990, according to statistics from the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth.

White Georgians, like other Southerners, usually describe their ancestry on the census questionnaire as “American”, “United States”, or simply “Southern”. The colonial settlement of large numbers of Scots-Irish Americans in the mountains and piedmont, and coastal settlement by English Americans and African Americans, have strongly influenced the state’s culture in food, language and music.

The concentration of Africans imported to coastal areas in the 18th century repeatedly from rice growing regions of West Africa led to the development of Gullah-Geechee language and culture in the Low Country among African Americans. They share a unique heritage in which African traditions of food, religion and culture were continued more than in some other areas. In the creolization of Southern culture, their foodways became an integral part of all Southern cooking in the Low Country.

Religion

Like most other Southern states, Georgia is largely Protestant Christian. The religious affiliations of the people of Georgia are as follows:

• Protestant – 38%

  • Baptist – 16%

  • Methodist – 12%

  • Presbyterian – 3%

  • Pentecostal – 3%

• Roman Catholic – 12%

• Other Religions – 3%

  • Non-Religious – 13%

Georgia shares its Protestant heritage with much of the Southeastern United States. However, the number of Roman Catholics is growing in the state because of the influx of Northeasterners resettling in the Atlanta metro area and also because of large Hispanic immigration into the state.

Georgia’s Jewish community dates to the settlement of 42 mostly Sephardic Portuguese Jews in Savannah in 1733. Atlanta also has a large, old, and established Jewish community.

Economy

Savannah’s River Street is a popular destination among tourists visiting coastal Georgia.

Map showing land use in Georgia

Georgia’s 2006 total gross state product was $380 billion. Its per capita personal income for 2005 put it 10th in the nation at $40,155. If Georgia were a stand-alone country, it would be the 28th largest economy in the world.

There are 15 Fortune 500 companies and 26 Fortune 1000 companies with headquarters in Georgia, including such names as Home Depot, UPS, Coca Cola, Delta Air Lines, AFLAC, Southern Company, and SunTrust Banks. Georgia has over 1,700 internationally headquartered facilities representing 43 countries, employing more than 112,000 Georgians with an estimated capital investment of $22.7 billion.

Agriculture and industry

Georgia’s agricultural outputs are poultry and eggs, pecans, peaches, peanuts, rye, cattle, hogs, dairy products, turfgrass, and vegetables. Its industrial outputs are textiles and apparel, transportation equipment, food processing, paper products, chemical products, electric equipment. Tourism also makes an important contribution to the economy. Georgia is home to the Granite Capital of the World (Elberton). Atlanta has been the site of enormous growth in real estate, service, and communications industries.

Atlanta has a very large effect on the state of Georgia and the Southeastern United States. The city is an ever growing addition to communications, industry, transportation, tourism, and government. Food is also a major industry in Georgia.

Industry in Georgia is now quite diverse. Major products in the mineral and timber industry include a variety of pines, clays, stones, and sands. Textile industry is located around the cities of Rome, Columbus, Augusta, and Macon. Atlanta is a leading center of tourism, transportation, communications, government, and industry. Some industries there include automobile and aircraft manufacturing, food and chemical processing, printing, publishing, and large corporations. Some of the corporations headquartered in Atlanta are: Arby’s, Chick-fil-A, The Coca-Cola Company, Georgia Pacific, Hooters, ING Americas, Cox, and Delta Air Lines. Major corporations in other parts of the state include: Aflac, CareSouth, Home Depot, Newell Rubbermaid, Primerica Financial Services, United Parcel Service, Waffle House and Zaxby’s.

Several United States military installations are located in Georgia including Fort Stewart, Hunter Army Airfield, Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Fort Benning, Moody Air Force Base, Robins Air Force Base, Naval Air Station Atlanta, Fort McPherson, Fort Gillem, Fort Gordon, Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany and Dobbins Air Reserve Base. However, due to the latest round of BRAC cuts, Forts Gillem and McPherson will be closing and NAS Atlanta will be transferred to the Georgia National Guard.

Energy use and production

Georgia’s electricity generation and consumption are among the highest in the United States, with coal being the primary electrical generation of fuel. However, the state also has two nuclear power plants which contribute one fourth of Georgia’s electricity generation. The leading area of energy consumption is the industrial sector due to the fact that Georgia “is a leader in the energy-intensive wood and paper products industry”.

State taxes

Georgia’s personal income tax ranges from 1% to 6% within six tax brackets. There is a 6% state sales tax, which is not applied to prescription drugs, certain medical devices, and groceries. Each county may add up to a 2% SPLOST. Counties participating in MARTA have another 1%; MARTA is the only major metropolitan rapid transit authority in the U.S. not to receive state funding. The city of Atlanta (in two counties, roughly 90% in Fulton and 10% in Dekalb) has the only city sales tax (1%, total 8%) for fixing its aging sewers. Local taxes are almost always charged on groceries but never prescriptions. Up to 1% of a SPLOST can go to homestead exemptions (the HOST). All taxes are collected by the Georgia Department of Revenue and then properly distributed according to any agreements that each county has with its cities.

Culture

Main article: Culture of Georgia (U.S. state)

Fine and performing arts

Georgia’s major fine art museums include the Georgia Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, the Michael C. Carlos Museum, the Morris Museum of Art and the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art. The Atlanta Opera is a full time company that brings opera to Georgia stages. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is the most widely recognized orchestra and largest arts organization in the southeastern United States. Moreover, almost all of the universities, colleges, and junior colleges in Atlanta provide some musical instruction.

Literature

Georgia literature is distinct among the literature of other places in the world in its historical and geographical context and the values it imparts. Dramas such as the play (on which a successful movie was also based) Driving Miss Daisy are one example of Georgia’s literary culture. The most popular and famous novel has probably been Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, also the basis of a wildly successful movie. Other authors who challenged popular ideas were Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor. Contemporary authors such as Alice Walker have also used Georgia’s complex past as subjects for fiction, as in her The Color Purple.

Georgia’s poets, such as James Dickey and Sidney Lanier, and nonfiction writers like humorist Lewis Grizzard also have a place in the state’s literary life.

Entertainment

*Music

Music in Georgia ranges from folk music to rhythm and blues, rock and roll, country music and hip hop. The Georgia Music Hall of Fame, located in Macon is the state’s museum of music. Georgia’s folk musical traditions include important contributions to the Piedmont blues, shape note singing and African American music. The Sacred Harp, compiled and produced by Georgians Benjamin Franklin White and Elisha J. King, was published in 1844. The Sacred Harp system use notes expressed with shapes to make it easy for people to learn to sight-read music and performed complex pieces without a lot of training.

The Black Crowes are a group out of Marietta, Georgia that fuse blues, rock, and gospel into a Southern-soul-driven hard-rockin’ extravaganza with tones of Zeppelin-power and Sunday morning inspiration. The city of Athens, Georgia, home to the University of Georgia has been a fertile field for alternative rock bands since the late 1970s. Notable bands from Athens include R.E.M., The B-52s, Widespread Panic, Drive-By Truckers, as well as bands from the Elephant 6 Recording Company most notably Neutral Milk Hotel.

Rhythm and Blues is another important musical genre in Georgia. Augusta native James Brown and Macon native Little Richard, two important figures in R&B history, started performing in Georgia clubs on the Chitlin’ Circuit, fused gospel music with blues and boogie-woogie to lay the foundations for R&B and soul music, and rank among the most iconic musicians of the 20th century. In the 1960s, Atlanta native Gladys Knight proved one of the most popular Motown recording artists, while Otis Redding, born in the small town of Dawson but raised in Macon, defined the grittier Southern soul sound of Memphis-based Stax Records. Opera singer Jessye Norman is native to Augusta.

Collective Soul, a hard rock band known for their song “Shine”, are from Stockbridge, Georgia.

*Film

Hundreds of feature films have been located in Georgia. By 2007 more than $4 billion had been generated for the state’s economy by the film and television industry since the 1970s. Such films include Deliverance; Smokey and the Bandit; Driving Miss Daisy and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, with settings ranging from Appalachia to the manicured squares of Savannah. Due to the success of Deliverance, as governor Jimmy Carter established a state film commission, now known as the Georgia Film, Video and Music Office, in 1973 to market Georgia as a shooting location for future projects. The commission had recruited more than 550 major projects to the state by 2007. Actress Julia Roberts is one of the most well-known natives of Georgia.

Popular culture

Stereotypical Georgian traits include manners known as “Southern hospitality”, a strong sense of community and shared culture, and a distinctive Southern dialect. Georgia’s Southern heritage makes turkey and dressing a traditional holiday dish during both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Movies like Gone with the Wind and the book If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground by Lewis Grizzard lampoon (and celebrate) Georgia culture, speech and mannerisms.

Girl Scouting in the United States of America began on March 12, 1912 when Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scout troop meeting of 18 girls in Savannah, Georgia.

Health care and education

Georgia Tech’s Tech Tower

Anderson Hall at Savannah College of Art and Design

Health care

See also: List of hospitals in Georgia (U.S. state)

Georgians can find medical and dental care “via 151 general hospitals, more than 15,000 doctors and nearly 6,000 dentists.” The state is ranked forty-first in the percentage of residents who engage in regular exercise.

Education

See also: List of colleges and universities in Georgia (U.S. state), List of high schools in Georgia, and List of school districts in Georgia

Georgia high schools (grades nine through twelve) are required to administer a standardized, multiple-choice End of Course Test, or EOCT, in each of eight core subjects including Algebra I, Geometry, U.S. History, Economics, Biology, Physical Science, Ninth Grade Literature and Composition, and American Literature and Composition. The official purpose of the tests is to assess “specific content knowledge and skills.” Although a minimum test score is not required for the student to receive credit in the course, completion of the test is mandatory. The EOCT score comprises 15% of a student’s grade in the course.

High school students must also receive passing scores on four Georgia High School Graduation Tests (GHSGT) and the Georgia High School Writing Assessment in order to receive a diploma. Subjects assessed include Mathematics, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies. These tests are initially offered during students’ eleventh-grade year, allowing for multiple opportunities to pass the tests before graduation at the end of twelfth grade.

Georgia is home to almost 70 public colleges, universities, and technical colleges in addition to over 45 private institutes of higher learning.

The HOPE scholarship, funded by the state lottery, is available to all Georgia residents who have graduated from high school with a 3.0 or higher grade point average and who attend a public college or university in the state. The scholarship covers the cost of tuition and provides a stipend for books for up to 120 credit hours. If the student does not maintain a 3.0 average while in college they may lose the scholarship in which case they will have the chance to get it back by bringing their grade point average above a 3.0 within a period of 30 credit hours. This scholarship has had a significant impact on the state university system, increasing competition for admission and increasing the quality of education.

Source: Georgia (U.S. State) in Wikipedia

Apartment Investors Still Looking at Atlanta

Based on the area’s continued strong job growth, investors that are not even directly from Georgia or nearby states, but have continually to understand development and real estate still seek opportunities among metropolitan apartment complexes. But, there is also an even bigger trouble that apartments have to face in the future. Single-family homes are sprouting like mushrooms and they are also being put up for rent which can become a dilemma to apartment owners.

Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services have reported the one above and the following as well. Employers, for the past 5 consecutive years will still continue to add new positions to each of their firms for the year 2008. A forecast for 22,200 new positions this year is expected and is also according to Atlanta Apartment Research Report. Local rental units are now the main demands of prospects from investors. Properties are selling for a median price of $64,800 per unit over the past year, up 17%.

John Leonard, a regional manager  of Marcus & Millichap’sin Atlanta said that “investment activity will continue to moderate this year, slowed by conservative lending practices,” and “out-of-state buyers, especially from California, will remain present, targeting the metro for its higher initial yields and prospects for steady long-term growth.”

This year, an approximate 3,400 new apartment units are expected to open in Metro Atlanta.  An expected 8.6% of vacancy rate should happen but rates for asking rents are expected to be go up in a monthly basis 2.4% to $864 per month. On the other hand, effective rents will advance 2% to $773 per month.