Census
For those of you who like interactive data, the American Human Development Project has a great website that drills down to the county level for education, health, and income data in the U.S. It also has all of the data in a spreadsheet, if you want to do your own analysis.
So wonk out!
Republicans are in a bit of a bind regarding the U.S. Census. In the past, they have opposed "statistical sampling", which would readjust the Census results to account for undersampled groups, such as the poor and minorities, which typically vote Democratic. In fact, congressional Republicans made Obama's Census director pinky-swear not to do this, and he did:
Robert Groves, director of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center and a former Census Bureau official, is an expert on statistical sampling, the practice of extrapolating a larger population from a smaller slice of it.…
Apropos of my skepticism of Census projections of 2050 demographic balances, there's a new paper out on Argentina which is relevant. Here's Wikipedia on Argentina's self-conception:
As with other areas of new settlement such as Canada, Australia and the United States, Argentina is considered a country of immigrants. Most Argentines are descended from colonial-era settlers and of the 19th and 20th century immigrants from Europe, and 86.4% of Argentina's population self-identify as European descent. An estimated 8% of the population is mestizo, and a further 4% of Argentines were of Arab or…
White Americans' majority to end by mid-century:
The estimated time when whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans has been pushed back eight years -- to 2050 -- because the recession and stricter immigration policies have slowed the flow of foreigners into the U.S.
Census Bureau projections released Wednesday update last year's prediction that white children would become a minority in 2023 and the overall white population would follow in 2042. The earlier estimate did not take into account a drop in the number of people moving into the U.S. because of the economic crisis and…
Poking around the CensusScope site I found some interesting maps to compare & contrast. Here are the frequency of "nuclear families":
No big surprises here. Utah & the Heartland have a high proportion of households composed of nuclear families. The Black Belt, not as much.
How about families composed of people "living in sin"? That is, unmarried couples.
Looks like "Greater New England" likes the sin. Though that isn't a function of climate, as Florida mirrors New England with high rates of cohabitation and low rates of nuclear families.
Now how about families where grandparents are…