US Census

Maps that look at the US Census at the macro-perspective of all counties in the United States.

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How Americans Self-Sort Themselves by Age and Class

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How Americans Self-Sort Themselves by Age and Class

"The Sunbelt is growing, the Rust Belt is dying, and the only thing keeping expensive coastal cities afloat is international immigration, as American-born residents flee their escalating housing prices."

"That pretty much sums up the conventional wisdom about the recent growth and decline of U.S. cities. And that conventional wisdom was only reinforced last month when the Census Bureau released its latest figures on population growth for America’s metropolitan areas. Nine of the top 10 counties with the largest numeric increase in population last year were in the Sunbelt, with the one exception being King County, where Seattle is located."

"But the conventional wisdom masks a deeper trend: America’s geography continues to be reshaped by a polarized pattern of socioeconomic sorting. This process is driven by a selective population shift of the most affluent, the best-educated, and the young to expensive coastal metros like the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Seattle, and the New York–Boston–Washington corridor, with the less affluent and less educated flowing into cheaper Sunbelt metros, and the even less advantaged trapped in Rust Belt areas."

New Yorkers continue to flee state in large numbers

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Study: New Yorkers continue to flee state in large numbers

"United Van Lines, which has tracked customers' state-to-state migration patterns for 40 years, says New York had the third highest rate of residents moving to other states in 2017. The Empire State has fallen from No. 2 between 2012-2015, but has ranked in the top three outbound states for seven years in a row. The study found the majority of moves to and from New York state -- 61 percent -- were outbound last year. Only two states had higher rates of exodus: Illinois and New Jersey."

This is fairly consistent with the Census Out-Migration estimates, and what you hear on the street, so I'm sure this is true. That said, the state is not losing population, because New York City is a mecca for immigrants from other countries, and indeed the New York City Metropolitan-area is only expected to increase in population compared to the rest of the state.

For Some Arab Americans, Checking A Census Box Is Complicated

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For Some Arab Americans, Checking A Census Box Is Complicated

Between 1880 and 1930, Congress and statisticians tried to create standards to mandate that census information couldn't be used for "taxation, regulation or investigation" or to "harm" a people or organizations, as explained by Margo Anderson, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in a related paper.

Circumventing those standards, the U.S. government used census data to locate and deliver more than 100,000 Japanese Americans to incarceration camps. This happened, Anderson pointed out, before the United States was an "equal opportunity, affirmative action, civil rights society" and when Japanese immigrants were considered "aliens ineligible for citizenship." She pointed out in a conversation with NPR that at the time, "nobody disputed the legal foundation for incarcerating" the so-called aliens.

In the case of Japanese Americans, the question was not "who was Japanese, but where did Japanese mainly live," said Kenneth Prewitt, a former director of the U.S. Census Bureau who is now a professor at Columbia University. "Yes, census data can be inappropriately used to target for attention particular neighborhoods where persons of MENA ancestry are concentrated," Prewitt said. But, he said, doing so would not be any more illegal than targeting "places where elderly people live, to know where to send rescue vehicles in case of flooding or power outings or where veterans live in order to place VA hospitals nearby. So the issue is not who clusters where but for what purposes is that information used."