After months of delays, the 2020 census results used to redraw voting districts around the country will finally be released on Aug. 12, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday.
In a tweet, the federal government's largest statistical agency confirmed that the detailed demographic data will be posted on its website four days sooner than Aug. 16, the previously announced deadline the bureau had agreed to meet as part of a lawsuit by Ohio over the data's release schedule.
The coronavirus pandemic and interference by the administration of former President Donald Trump have forced the bureau to put out new redistricting data about five months later than its original schedule in order to run more quality checks.
Now that I’ve learned all of the advantagesdata processing with Python, I think my next adventure is going to be to figure out how to directly query the various Census databases directly rather than downloading the individual zip files from then editing and processing them in LibreOffice Calc. I’d much rather try to automate as much of this as possible so I can do new concepts for the blog, importing and mapping even more data.
It sure would be nice to able to get full census tables for a county with a few lines of code and have them dumped into a CSV file for a chart or to link to a map.
This map shows the number of houses, per US County lacking complete plumbing facilities. This includes both occupied and unoccupied housing units, e.g. seasonal cabins. The US Census defines complete plumbing facilities are houses with hot and cold running water, a flush toilet, a bathtub or shower, a sink with a faucet, a stove or range, and a refrigerator. Rural counties, with a lot of cabins, are most likely to have a large number of housing units without complete plumbing facilities.
President Biden's White House is reviving a previously stalled review of proposed policy changes that could allow the Census Bureau to ask about people's race and ethnicity in a radical new way in time for the 2030 head count, NPR has learned.
First proposed in 2016, the recommendations lost steam during former President Donald Trump's administration despite years of research by the bureau that suggested a new question format would improve the accuracy of 2020 census data about Latinos and people with roots in the Middle East or North Africa.
The proposals also appear to have received the backing of other federal government experts on data about race and ethnicity, based on a redacted document that NPR obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The document lists headings for redacted descriptions of the group's "recommended improvements," including "Improve data quality: Allow flexibility in question format for self-reported race and ethnicity."
A three-judge court has rejected Alabama's request to force the U.S. Census Bureau to move up the release of 2020 census redistricting data. The federal judges have also allowed the bureau to continue plans for a new way of keeping people's census information confidential.
The ruling is expected to be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up the next major legal battle at the high court involving last year's national head count and adding another layer of uncertainty to when the redrawing of voting districts around the country using 2020 census data can begin.
The number of babies born in the U.S. dropped by 4% in 2020 compared with the previous year, according to a new federal report released Wednesday. The general fertility rate was 55.8 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, reaching yet another record low, according to the provisional data.
"This is the sixth consecutive year that the number of births has declined after an increase in 2014, down an average of 2% per year, and the lowest number of births since 1979," the National Center for Health Statistics said.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is renewing a push that failed during the previous administration to extend the deadlines for reporting 2020 census results after the pandemic and Trump officials' interference disrupted the count.
If passed, two bills introduced Tuesday could help shield the U.S. Census Bureau from any questions about the legality of numbers and other data it is set to release months after current federal law says they are due.
The bureau has flagged since last April that it needs more time to ensure the accuracy of new census data. The agency is now close to four months late in delivering the state population counts used to reallocate each state's share of votes in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. That delay also forced the bureau to postpone putting out the data needed to redraw voting districts. That information was due to the states by the end of March.
Both the Senate bill introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska — and its House counterpart introduced by Democrats led by Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, plus Republican Rep. Don Young of Alaska — would push back the deadline for congressional apportionment counts from Dec. 31, 2020, to "not later than" May 1, which in effect means they have to be in by April 30, according to Schatz's communications director, Mike Inacay. Redistricting data would be due by Sept. 30.
That's kind of a bummer, as I want to use that data to make maps and look at population and race trends across Capital District.