New Marriage and Divorce Data from the Census Bureau, of all Places

The US Census Bureau has just published its first detailed report on marriage and divorce in the United States. Why? Well, the Census Bureau explains it thus:

Historically, data on marriages and divorces in the United States were collected from marriage and divorce certificates filed and collected at the state-level through the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) vital statistics system. In 1996, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the NCHS discontinued the collection of detailed state-level vital records data from marriage and divorce certificates. Beginning in 2008, questions about marital events were added to the ACS to collect national and state-level marriage and divorce data. These new marital events items fill a void in the marriage and divorce data collected in the United States.

The Associated Press picked up on the main findings:

Will the Census Bureau Really Kill Off the Statistical Abstract?

There has been a great deal of moaning the past few days about the news from the US Census Bureau that it is thinking of shutting off the US Statistical Abstract, which is one of the most popular items on its already very popular website (www.census.gov). Reuters News Agency summed up the situation:

A cost-cutting plan by the Census Bureau to kill off its U.S. Statistical Abstract was under fire this week from pundits and policy experts who rely on the annual collection of census data.

Published since 1878 and now nearly 1,000 pages, the abstract summarizes key metrics -- some weighty and some just interesting -- on the social, political and economic shape of the United States and beyond.

The bureau said in its fiscal 2012 budget report to Congress that it could save $2.9 million a year by terminating the abstract. It said the move was a "difficult decision." Both the printed and online versions would be discontinued.

Paul Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times who is often at odds with Samuelson on policy issues, in a column on Monday also protested the bureau's judgment.

Central Americans Account for the Majority of Latinos in Maryland

The Washington Examiner has a story today about the high percentage of Latinos in Maryland that are from Central America, especially El Salvador, despite the fact that the average American probably thinks that anyone speaking Spanish is from Mexico (which the US government now typically defines as being in North America, rather than Central America).

Central Americans now make up the majority of Maryland's Hispanic population -- the fastest-growing population in the state -- a growth primarily led by a large influx of Salvadorans over the last decade, new Census data shows.

In the last decade, the number of Salvadorans statewide more than tripled and their share of Maryland's Hispanic population increased by 11 percentage points, the largest jump of any group."It's important to keep in mind that a lot of growth is coming from children, so that has its own set of issues associated with it," said Audrey Singer, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. "[Especially] with certain countries like El Salvador and Guatemala where the economy and political conditions were so harsh that people who would not normally leave did leave."

Gentrification and Diversity in American Cities

Gentrification has been underway in richer cities of the world for decades, but the 2010 Census in the US has revealed that it is an important part of increasing the residential diversity of cities. The latest story comes from New York, where the NY Times reports on the transformation of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in NYC's Borough of Brooklyn "that traces its African-American roots to the early 19th century and has been the borough’s black cultural capital for decades."

Overshadowed by Harlem’s racial metamorphosis since 2000, an even more striking evolution has occurred in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Over all, the neighborhood is now barely 60 percent black — down from 75 percent a decade ago. But in the older Bedford section west of Throop Avenue, according to the 2010 census, blacks have recently become a minority of the population for the first time in 50 years.

“Both the fall of the crime rate and the improvement of the subway were conditions that made this neighborhood more attractive to people who might not have considered living there in the past,” said John H. Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

“In the 2010 census, the first thing we noticed was how the concentrations in many traditional black and white areas dropped off across so many blocks,” said Steven Romalewski, director of the mapping service of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY’s Graduate Center, which analyzed the census results block by block.

Hispanics Continue to be Victimized by US Immigration Policies

Professor Douglas Massey of Princeton has an excellent Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times that connects the dots between the current US immigration policy, the sub-prime mortgage practices that led to the housing bubble, and the rather astounding drop in household wealth among Hispanics as a result of the Great Recession. The latter finding is drawn from a new Pew Hispanic Center report that analyzes a just-released set of data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Among the highlights of Massey's comments are the following points:

Hispanic families saw the largest decline in wealth of any racial or ethnic group in the country during the latter half of the last decade: from 2005 to 2009, their median wealth fell by an astounding 66 percent. The reason? The implosion of the housing market, where Hispanic families had invested much of their wealth.But that’s only the latest chapter in a much longer story. Over the past two decades Hispanics have moved from the middle of the socioeconomic hierarchy, between blacks and whites, to a position below both. On virtually every indicator of socioeconomic welfare, Hispanics fell relative to blacks.This has nothing to do with nativist tropes like work ethic or resistance to assimilation and everything to do with misguided government policy: our immigration and border-control system has created a class of people cut off from traditional legal and economic structures and thus vulnerable to the worst depredations of the market system.Because of the irresistible draw of the American economy, militarization of the border didn’t really affect undocumented in-migration, but it did reduce out-migration — migrants knew that once they left it would be hard to get back in. Whereas there were an estimated 3 million undocumented migrants in 1990, the number rose thereafter to peak around 12 million in 2007 and 2008, at which point half of all Salvadoran immigrants, 60 percent of all Mexican immigrants and two-thirds of Guatemalan and Honduran immigrants were here illegally.

Small Town America is Nearly a Thing of the Past

Reporters have continued to mine the recent Population Reference Bureau report summarizing findings from the 2010 Census, and have discovered that rural America is on the verge of disappearing.

The latest 2010 census numbers hint at an emerging America where, by midcentury, city boundaries become indistinct and rural areas grow ever less relevant. Many communities could shrink to virtual ghost towns as they shutter businesses and close down schools, demographers say.

More metro areas are booming into sprawling megalopolises. Barring fresh investment that could bring jobs, however, large swaths of the Great Plains and Appalachia, along with parts of Arkansas, Mississippi and North Texas, could face significant population declines.

A key element in all of this has been the decline of mining and timber industries that created jobs in rural areas in the past but no longer do so. Farming is a now a big business, so there are relatively few farm families any more. Furthermore, almost everyone has access to the same TV and internet as everyone else, so rural areas are not socially isolated in the way that they once were.

The Dangers of Demographic Deception

I have already commented on the tendency of cities to think that they have been under-counted by the census--although there is never a complaint about over-counting. Mark VanLandingham, a demographer at Tulane University, has a very good Op-Ed piece in today's New York Times pointing out the dangers of over-estimating the population. 

Such overestimates have been especially problematic for New Orleans. According to the original census estimates for 2007, the city’s population stood at 239,124, which independent sources, like voter turnout and death records, indicate was a reasonable guess. But after heavy lobbying from then-Mayor Ray Nagin’s office — claiming the bureau’s methods missed large numbers of poor residents — the number was revised upward by about 20 percent, to 288,113.

A similarly successful challenge to the 2008 initial estimate led to yet another substantial uptick; combined, these revised estimates put the city on pace to recover almost all the residents it had lost after Hurricane Katrina within a few years.

World Bank Opens its Data Vault

If you are new to research that involves comparisons between countries, you may not appreciate how important it is that over the past year or so, the World Bank has made its huge international database increasingly available to the public over the internet. 

Created in 1944 and, by custom, headed by an American, the World Bank initially helped finance the reconstruction of war-torn Europe. Since then, it has extended many trillions in loans for a wide variety of projects, be they institutions like schools and hospitals, infrastructure like roads or, controversially, environmentally unfriendly projects like coal-fired power plants and hydroelectric dams. Along the way the World Bank, like the I.M.F., has tinkered with entire economies, sometimes with disastrous results.

In the process of handing out gobs of money, the World Bank has collected gobs of data and until very recently parsed it out sparingly and usually only for a fee. That approach began to change when Robert Zoellick became head of the Bank four years ago.

“As opposed to some imperious bureaucracy in Washington, we’re making things open and accessible to people,” he says. “That makes for better performance, it makes for a more open system, it makes for people having a different attitude about the World Bank.”

This has been a very welcome change and I encourage you to explore the data available online at www.worldbank.org.

Did the 2010 Census Really Undercount City Populations?

Despite the worldwide concern about population growth, local officials never want to be living in a place whose population is declining. It just isn't done. So, we are not surprised that a number of cities in the US are challenging, or are planning to challenge, the results of the 2010 census. Of course, no one ever challenges what they perceive to be an overcount; it is only a perceived undercount that is problematic.

Cities have two years to contest their counts under the Census Bureau's appeals process, which began this month.

"Along with federal funds, there's a psychological impact when a city loses population, because people and businesses want to be in a vibrant region where things are growing and happening," Cincinnati mayor Mark Mallory, who chairs the U.S. mayors' task force on the census, said in an interview.

"There will be a dramatic increase in the number of city challenges, I guarantee it," he said.

Doubts about the government's numbers are cropping up everywhere.

Real-estate agents in New York City want to know where the Census Bureau found vast stretches of empty housing that resulted in a tally that was 200,000 fewer people than expected. Miami officials are puzzled over a count that fell 30,000 below the bureau's 2009 estimate, contending that immigrants and middle-class whites in gated downtown condominiums were missed. Houston added two new city council seats, even though the 2010 count showed it fell 549 short of the population required to do so.

New Orleans Has Become More Racially Segregated Since Katrina

Geographer Richard Campanella of Tulane University has been analyzing demographic changes in New Orleans since Katrina and the surprising finding is that the city is now more residentially segregated by race than it was before the devastating flooding.

"Paradoxically, while much of greater Gentilly and eastern New Orleans lost large numbers of African-Americans in absolute numbers, they simultaneously became more African-American in a relative sense because the few whites who lived in those areas departed in even greater numbers than their black neighbors," Campanella, the author of six books about the city's landscape, noted in a summary of his findings.

Meanwhile, neighborhoods stretching from the Riverbend to Uptown and into Treme and St. Roch saw a parallel increase in the proportion of white residents, a change that reflects historic trends, Campanella wrote.

Census-Based Redistricting Ramps Up in California

The underlying purpose of the US Census is to apportion seats in the House of Representatives and to draw the boundaries of the districts in each state. As I have noted before, California is one of several states which has handed the authority for redistricting to a citizen's commission, rather than having the legislature do it (the Constitution says that in each state the legislature or its designee, will do this). The California Citizens Redistricting Commission has just released its first set of maps for the redistricting of the two houses of the state legislature and for Congressional districts. As you might imagine, these maps have created headlines all across the state. The San Diego Union-Tribune's front page story, for example, included the following comments:

The panel charged with redrawing political boundaries released a set of preliminary maps Friday that could have sweeping implications on future elections in San Diego County and across the state.

How California’s 40 senate, 80 assembly and 53 congressional districts are shaped could determine their partisan breakdown, who gets elected and what issues and positions are advocated for residents.

What's in a Name?

The US Social Security Administration has come out with its latest list of baby names, and one surprise is that José is no longer among even the top 50 most popular boy's name among Hispanics, not even in Texas, where it had been the most popular boy's name for a long time, but has now been replaced by Jacob (the overall most popular boy's name).

Because this happened when birthrates for Hispanic-Americans were among the highest of any ethnic or racial group, the rankings just might be a measure of assimilation, said Prof. Cleveland Kent Evans, who teaches psychology at Bellevue University in Nebraska and wrote “The Great Big Book of Baby Names.”

But, not so fast, argue others:

Ho-Hum Response to Latest US 2010 Census Data

The US Census Bureau has been releasing demographic "profiles" of each state (including an interactive map), with information from the 2010 census about counties and larger cities and areas in each state. Thus far, however, the press has been generally uninterested. This is partly due to the fact that the data are pretty basic (total counts by age and sex, ethnicity, household structure). The other problem is that reporters are always looking for something new, rather than confirmation of what might already have been suspected from the American Community Survey. So it was that the New York Times found a genuine surprise in these profiles of the boroughs of New York City:

The latest details from the 2010 census suggest that Manhattan has become a more attractive place for younger people — it was the only borough to register gains in both children under 5 and in its 15-to-34-year-old population. “It suggests an attraction to Manhattan for parents who can afford to live there,” said William H. Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institution.

China's Census Counts 1.34 Billion

China released the results of its 2010 census yesterday, and the total population number was almost exactly what the United Nations demographers had been projecting--1.34 billion--despite the New York Times story that incorrectly suggested that the UN had been expecting 1.4 billion. 

Ma Jianting, the director of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, said at a news conference on Thursday that the slowed rate of population growth showed that the one-child policy had “eased the pressure on resources and the environment and laid a relatively good foundation for steady and rapid economic and social development.”

But he suggested that the population’s rapid aging was a matter of potential concern. “We also need to pay close attention to the new changes of our population structure, adhering to the family planning policy while cautiously and gradually improving the policy to promote more balanced population growth in the country,” the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.

What is the Size of the Gay and Lesbian Community in the US?

There is no certain way to enumerate the gay and lesbian community in the US, but demographer Gary Gates, who is Distinguished Scholar at UCLA's Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, has put forward what has to be the most authoritative estimate to date. 

Gates' best estimate, derived from five studies that have asked subjects about their sexual orientation, is that the nation has about 4 million adults who identify as being gay or lesbian, representing 1.7 percent of the 18-and-over population.

The American Community Survey data are also providing new insights into the LGBT household relationships, as Gates shows in both a power point presentation, and an online video.

America's Youth Reveal the Country's Changing Face

William Frey of the Brookings Institution has just put out a new report, highlighted in today's New York Times, that compares some of the changes in the United States over the last three censuses. The most striking finding is that:

New minorities—Hispanics, Asians, and other groups apart from whites, blacks, and American Indians—account for all of the growth among the nation’s child population.  From 2000 to 2010, the population of white children nationwide declined by 4.3 million, while the population of Hispanic and Asian children grew by 5.5 million.

This trend undoubtedly brings some challenges, particularly as the younger part of the population becomes more racially and ethnically diverse than the older baby boomer- dominated white population. “Racial generation gaps” can emerge as a result of competing interests regarding community resources or views on issues like immigration.

How Might America's Changing Demographics Affect Politics?

This week's Economist looked at the 2010 Census Redistricting data from the perspective of what this might mean for the political landscape in the US. We won't have detailed age data for the country until May, but the redistricting data do break the population into the two age groups of under 18 (i.e., not of voting age), and 18 and older. The 18 and older non-Hispanic white population in the US grew very slightly between 2000 and 2010, but there were fewer non-Hispanic whites under the age of 18 in 2010 than there had been in 2000. The same was true for blacks, although the loss at the younger ages was not as large in percentage terms as for the whites. At the same time, there were substantial gains in both age groups for Hispanics and Asians.

What all this means for politics is the subject of some dispute. Right-wing analysts herald the ballooning population of the Republican-leaning states in the South and West and the relative stagnation of the Democratic bastions in the Midwest and north-east as proof of the superiority of Republican policies. What is more, they crow, faster growth is bringing more seats in the House of Representatives to Republican states, which could help to cement their current majority. Conservative Texas, for example, is gaining four seats in the reapportionment set in train by last year’s census; liberal New York is losing two.

Indian Census Count Totals 1.21 billion

The provisional results of the 2011 Census of India have just been released, and they show that the population has now reached 1.21 billion. BBC News notes that:

More people now live in India than in the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Bangladesh combined.
India launched the 2011 census last year. The exercise costs in the region of 22bn rupees ($490m; £300m). Some 2.7 million officials visited households in about 7,000 towns and 600,000 villages, classifying the population according to gender, religion, education and occupation.

Russian Census Results Confirm Population Decline

Results of the 2010 Census of the Russian Federation have just been released and, according to the report from the New York Times, they confirm that the population of Russia is in decline.

A census carried out in October 2010 showed that the population had fallen to 142.9 million, from 145.2 million in 2002, when the previous census was taken, and from 146.3 million in 2001, according to Russia’s Federal Statistics Service. Russia is expected to lose an estimated one million workers every year until 2017.

Non-Hispanic Whites Are Now a Minority in the New York Area

The recently released results of the US 2010 Census highlighted the growth nationally of the Hispanic and Asian populations.

More than half of the growth in the total U.S. population between 2000 and 2010 was because of the increase in the Hispanic population. Between 2000 and 2010, the Hispanic population grew by 43 percent, rising from 35.3 million in 2000 to 50.5 million in 2010. The rise in the Hispanic population accounted for more than half of the 27.3 million increase in the total U.S. population. By 2010, Hispanics comprised 16 percent of the total U.S. population of 308.7 million.

The non-Hispanic population grew relatively slower over the decade at about 5 percent. Within the non-Hispanic population, the number of people who reported their race as white alone grew even slower (1 percent). While the non-Hispanic white alone population increased numerically from 194.6 million to 196.8 million over the 10-year period, its proportion of the total population declined from 69 percent to 64 percent.

The 23 county area around New York City became the first region outside of the West or South to transition to a situation where non-Hispanic whites have become the minority.

In 2000, the census found that non-Hispanic whites made up 54.3 percent of the area’s population. By 2010, their share had declined to 49.6 percent.