Tag Archives: Census Bureau

A number of city-dwelling Americans say they live in suburbs

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A new survey from Trulia shows some city residents see themselves as living in a suburb, highlighting the blurry lines between urban and suburban areas in some cities:

To develop a standard definition of suburban that reflects what residents experience, the online real estate site Trulia, where I am the chief economist, surveyed 2,008 adults from across the U.S. We asked them to describe where they live as urban, suburban or rural, and we purposely did not define these terms for them. We also had each respondent’s ZIP code, which we used to identify his or her city, metropolitan area and state of residence. For this research, we treated ZIP codes as neighborhoods even though many ZIP codes encompass more area than what people may think of as a neighborhood.

It turns out that many cities’ legal boundaries line up poorly with what local residents perceive as urban. Nationally, 26 percent of Americans described where they live as urban, 53 percent said suburban and 21 percent said rural. (This comes close to the census estimate that 81 percent of the population is urban if “urban” is understood to include suburban areas.) Within “principal cities” of metropolitan areas (the census designates one or more cities in each metro as “principal”), respondents split 47 percent urban, 46 percent suburban and 7 percent rural, though those percentages include people in many small cities and metro areas. Looking only at respondents in the larger principal cities (those with a population greater than 100,000) of larger metropolitan areas (those with a population greater than 500,000), the breakdown was 56 percent urban, 42 percent suburban and 2 percent rural. That means close to half of people who live within city limits describe where they live as suburban.

Our analysis showed that the single best predictor of whether someone said his or her area was urban, suburban or rural was ZIP code density. Residents of ZIP codes with more than 2,213 households per square mile typically described their area as urban. Residents of neighborhoods with 102 to 2,213 households per square mile typically called their area suburban. In ZIP codes with fewer than 102 households per square mile, residents typically said they lived in a rural area. The density cutoff we found between urban and suburban — 2,213 households per square mile — is roughly equal to the density of ZIP codes 22046 (Falls Church in Northern Virginia); 91367 (Woodland Hills in California’s San Fernando Valley); and 07666 (Teaneck, New Jersey)…

Furthermore, the new census population data shows that the fastest-growing large cities tend to be more suburban. Among the 10 fastest-growing cities with more than 500,000 people, five — Austin, Fort Worth, Charlotte, San Antonio and Phoenix — are majority suburban, and a sixth, Las Vegas, is only 50 percent urban. Only one of the 10 fastest-growing, Seattle, is at least 90 percent urban.

Several quick thoughts:

1. As this article notes in addition to a number of scholars, it is difficult to measure exactly what the suburbs are. The Census Bureau definition put the suburbs between central cities in metropolitan areas and rural areas though geographically limited by county lines. As this survey notes, there are official geographic boundaries but then there are also the lived experiences of residents.

2. It is not surprising that Sunbelt city residents may be more likely to see themselves as suburban. These cities are often much bigger than cities in the Northeast and the Midwest which were hemmed in by more restrictive annexation laws around the turn of the 20th century.

3. This gets more complicated in surveys if you allow people to choose that they live in a small town as many suburban residents would choose that option.

“Urban clusters” = a small town outside of an urban area

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In looking at Census definitions for urban areas, I found this definition for what many Americans would consider small towns:

For the 2010 Census, an urban area will comprise a densely settled core of census tracts and/or census blocks that meet minimum population density requirements, along with adjacent territory containing non-residential urban land uses as well as territory with low population density included to link outlying densely settled territory with the densely settled core.  To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,500 people, at least 1,500 of which reside outside institutional group quarters.  The Census Bureau identifies two types of urban areas:

  • Urbanized Areas (UAs) of 50,000 or more people;
  • Urban Clusters (UCs) of at least 2,500 and less than 50,000 people.

“Rural” encompasses all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area.

From a certain perspective, this all makes sense. When we think of cities, we think of places with larger populations and the Census sets this boundary at 50,000 people. At the same time, “urban clusters” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as “urban areas.”

An additional complication in all of this is that Americans might legitimately see themselves as small town residents within an urban area. For example, the Chicago region may have over nine million residents but more than two-thirds live outside of the city and many live in communities under 60,000 people. The cultural attachment is “small town” is important: it often implies a tighter-knit community, a certain quality of life (particularly avoiding big city problems), and smaller units of government that are more responsive to local residents.

My recommendations would be:

1. Find a replacement term for “urban cluster” that is more palatable.

2. We need a better way to differentiate between small town feel and actual small towns. Leaders in Naperville often claim it has features of a small town even with a population of over 140,000.

Census projects record proportion of foreign-born residents in 2060

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Recent projections from the US Census Bureau suggest the immigrant population will continue to grow:

The nation’s foreign-born population is projected to reach 78 million by 2060, making up 18.8% of the total U.S. population, according to new Census Bureau population projections. That would be a new record for the foreign-born share, with the bureau projecting that the previous record high of 14.8% in 1890 will be passed as soon as 2025.

Yet while Asian and Hispanic immigrants are projected to continue to be the main sources of U.S. immigrant population growth, the new projections show that the share of the foreign born is expected to fall among these two groups. Today, 66.0% of U.S. Asians are immigrants, but that share is predicted to fall to 55.4% by 2060. And while about a third of U.S. Hispanics (34.9%) are now foreign-born, the Census Bureau projects that this share too will fall, to 27.4% in 2060. These declines are due to the growing importance of births as drivers of each group’s population growth. Already, for Hispanics, U.S. births drive 78% of population growth…

Foreign-Born Share of Population to Reach Historic High by 2060

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The U.S. today has more immigrants than any other nation. As the nation’s immigrant population grows, so too will the number of children who have at least one immigrant parent. As of 2012, these second generation Americans made up 11.5% of the population, and that share is expected to rise to 18.4% by 2050, according to Pew Research Center projections.

This is the first time in 14 years the Census Bureau has made projections of the foreign-born population. Predicting future immigration and birth trends is a tricky process, and the bureau has substantially changed its projections from year to year in light of reduced immigration and birth rates.

While these numbers are sure to contribute to political debate about current policies, they continue trends started in the late 1960s where immigration policies were changed. Additionally, the projections suggest the United States is still a desirable place to immigrate to and that the growing foreign-born population is a significant contributor to the overall growing population of the US.

I would be interested to hear about the discussions behind the scenes regarding the 14 year gap in making such projections. How much of this was guided by politics? What are the upper and lower bounds of the confidence intervals for these projections? Have our projection abilities improved significantly?

97% response rate for American Community Survey

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The Census Bureau regularly collects data through the American Community Survey and it has a high response rate:

“Since 2005, the American Community Survey has produced an annual overall survey response rate of around 97 percent,” says James Treat, chief of the American Community Survey Office. He compares filling out a survey to serving on a jury, paying taxes or getting a valid driver’s license.

The Census Bureau can do more than push patriotic buttons to persuade people. Under Title 13 of the U.S. Code, a person who willfully ignores the survey can be fined as much as $100. That fine could be as high as $500 if you lie — maybe claim to access the Internet through a “mobile broadband plan” because you don’t want to admit to having a “dial-up service.”

Treat says the Census Bureau has a thorough procedure to check for inconsistencies and inaccuracies and that people don’t need to worry about their private information being shared with immigration officials, cops, the IRS, employers or cable-service providers.

Given concerns today about survey fatigue, this response rate is astounding. It is a good thing since the data is used by all sorts of government agencies as well as researchers. Even though the ACS draws occasional attention from lawmakers who want to cut budgets, it also doesn’t rise the same kind of ire compared to the dicennial census and its massive undertaking.

The difficulties in finding out the most popular street name in the United States

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FiveThirtyEight tries to find out the most common street name in the US and this leads to comparing Census information from 1993 with a Reddit user’s work:

The chart on Reddit that sparked your question looks very different from the 1993 list of most common street names from the Census Bureau.

Why, for example are there 3,238 extra Main streets in that chart compared with the census records in 1993? To find out, I got in touch with “darinhq,” whose name is Darin Hawley when he’s not producing charts on Reddit. After speaking to him, I think there are three explanations for the difference between his chart and the official data.

First, some new streets may have been built over the past 20 years (Hawley used 2013 census data to make his chart). Second, some streets may have changed their names: If a little town grows, it might change the name of its principal street from Tumbleweed Lane to Main Street.

Third, I don’t know how the Census Bureau produced its 1993 list (I asked, and a spokesperson told me the researcher who made it can’t recall his methodology), so Hawley might have simply used a different methodology to produce his chart. Because I wasn’t able to find any data on the frequency that American streets are renamed or the rate at which new streets are being built, I’m going to stake my money on this third explanation. Hawley told me that he counted “Main St N” and “N Main St” as two separate streets in his data. If the Census Bureau counted them as just one street, that could account for the difference.

That’s not the only executive decision Hawley made when he was summarizing this data. He set a minimum of how far away one Elm Street in Maine had to be from another Elm Street in Maine to qualify as two separate streets. That’s a problem because streets can break and resume in unexpected ways.

In other words, getting an answer requires making some judgment calls with the available data. While this is the sort of question that exemplifies the intriguing things we can all learn from the Internet, it is also a question that likely isn’t important enough to spend a lot of time with it. As an urban sociologist, this is an interesting question but what would I learn from the frequencies of street names? What hypothesis could I test? It might roughly tell us the names that Americans give to roads. What we value may just be reflected in these road names. For example, the Census data suggests that numbered streets and references to nature dominate the top 20. Does this mean we like order (a pragmatic approach) and idyllic yet vague nature terms (park, view, lake, tree names) over other things? Yet, the list has limitations as these communities and roads were built at different times, roads can be renamed, and we do have to make judgment calls about what specifies separate streets.

Two other thoughts:

1. The Census researcher who did this back in the early 1990s can’t remember the methodology. Why wasn’t it part of the report?

2. Is this something that would be best left up to marketers (who might find some advertising value in this) or GIS firms (who have access to comprehensive map data)?

One-quarter of Americans live in areas with over 20% poverty

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The Census Bureau recently released updated data showing an increased number of Americans living within poverty areas:

In 2010, the overall U.S. poverty rate was about 15 percent. However, about a quarter of all Americans lived in a so-called “poverty area”—defined as a census tract where more than 20 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. For our purposes, we can just call these places poor neighborhoods, even though the term is a little more accurate in an urban context than a rural one. The problem was especially severe in Appalachia and across the South and Southwest, where in most states 30 percent or more of all residents lived in these communities…

The South may have the greatest share of its population packed into poor neighborhoods, but the growth of concentrated poverty was actually fastest in the Midwest, as shown on the graph below. The poor-neighborhood population also became more suburban and rural compared to 2000, according to the Census…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Researchers have paid more attention to such neighborhoods in recent decades and yet the problem seems to have gotten worse.

Wait, What’s Your Problem: the Census does or does not require people to participate?

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Sunday’s What’s Your Problem? column in the Chicago Tribune featured a woman irritated by some Census workers who did sound like creepers. Yet, a Census employee is still unclear about whether U.S. residents have to participate in Census surveys:

He said census interviewers are trained to be professional, courteous, and to never use the possibility of a fine to coerce people into participating.

Olson said the American Community Survey is mandatory and there is a potential fine for people who fail to participate, but the Census Bureau relies on public cooperation to encourage responses.

The survey is important because its data guide nearly 70 percent of federal grants, Olson said.

This is a common response from the Census but it is still vague. Is participating in the Census and the American Community Survey mandatory or not? Is there a fine for participation or not? The answer seems to be yes and yes – mandatory, a fine is possible, and yet no has to really worry about incurring a penalty.

Typical social science research, which is akin to what the Census Bureau is doing (and the organization has been led by sociologists), has several basic rules regarding ethics in collecting information from people. Don’t harm people. (See the above story about peeking in people’s windows.) And participation has to be voluntary. This can include contacting people multiple times. So is participation really voluntary if there is even the implicit idea of a fine? This is where it is less like social science research and more like government action, which is a fine line the Census is walking here. Clearing this up might help improve relations with people who are suspicious of why the Census wants basic information about their lives.

 

New American homes bigger than ever in 2013

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Census data shows new American homes grew in 2013 to nearly 2,600 square feet:

According to just released data, both the median and average size of a new single-family home built in 2013 hit new all time highs of 2,384 and 2,598 square feet respectively.

And while it is known that in absolute number terms the total number of new home sales is still a fraction of what it was before the crisis, the one strata of new home sales which appears to not only not have been impacted but is openly flourishing once more, are the same McMansions which cater to the New Normal uberwealthy (which incidentally are the same as the Old Normal uberwealthy, only wealthier) and which for many symbolize America’s unbridled greed for mega housing no matter the cost.

…

Of the 569,000 single-family homes completed in 2013:

  • 518,000 had air-conditioning.
  • 59,000 had two or fewer bedrooms and 251,000 had four bedrooms or more.
  • 27,000 had one and one-half bathrooms or less, whereas 188,000 homes had three or more bathrooms.
  • 166,000 had a full or partial basement, while 91,000 had a crawl space, and 312,000 had a slab or other type of foundation.
  • 305,000 had two or more stories.
  • 333,000 had a forced-air furnace and 216,000 had a heat pump as the primary heating system.
  • 347,000 had a heating system powered by gas and 214,000 had a heating system powered by electricity.

The headline reads “McMansions Are Back and Are Bigger Than Ever.” The data would seem to support such an argument as square footage continues to increase and homes have more amenities. Additionally, this is more evidence that the higher ends of the housing market are more robust these days compared to the lower end where smaller homes aren’t moving as quickly.

US homeownership rate drops to 65%

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The homeownership rate in the United States dropped in the last quarter to its lowest level since 1995:

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the nation’s homeownership rate slipped to 65 percent in the three months that ended in March, a decline from 65.4 percent posted in both the first and last quarters of 2012.

This suggests the housing market is still having a lot of trouble.

Here is the complete 12 page press release from the Census. Some interesting extra info:

-Homeownership rate 1Q 2013 by age: Under 35 36.8%; 35-44 60.1%; 45-54 71.3%; 55-64 77.0%; 65 and over 80.4%.

-Homeownership rate 1Q 2013 by race/ethnicity: Non-Hispanic White alone 73.4%; Black alone 43.1%; All other races 54.6%; Hispanic (of any race) 45.3%.

Here is a table of homeownership rates each decade since 1900 – the biggest jump seems to be from 1940 to 1960, coming out of the Great Depression and then into the era of mass suburbanization.

 

 

Census Bureau moving to more online data collection to save money

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The US Census Bureau is collecting more information online in order to cut costs:

The Census Bureau already has started offering an Internet option to the 250,000 households it selects every month at random for the American Community Survey. Since becoming available in January, more than half the responses have come in on a secure site that requires codes and PIN numbers.

The bureau expects to use the Internet — plus smart phones and other technologies yet to be invented — for the next decen­nial census, in 2020.

The increasing reliance on technology is designed to save money. The 2010 Census cost $96 per household, including the American Community Survey that has replaced the old long form. That cost has more than doubled in two decades, up from $70 in 2000 and $39 as recently as 1990…

The Census Bureau spent two years running preliminary experiments in how people responded to American Commu­nity Survey questions on the computer screen. Five rounds of ­testing involved tracking eye movements as people scanned a Web page looking for which answer they wanted to check.

The households selected for the survey still get their first contact the old-fashioned way, with a mailed letter telling them the questionnaire is on its way. Then they receive a letter telling them how to respond over the Internet. If they don’t use that option, they get a 28-page paper form a few weeks later.

It is too bad this may be motivated primarily by money. I would hope it would be motivated more by wanting to collect better data and boost response rates. However, I’m glad they seem to have done a good amount of testing. But, the article fails to address one of the biggest issues with web surveys: can this technique be used widely with different groups in the US population or does it work best with certain groups (usually younger, more Internet access)? All this is related to how much money can be saved: what percentage of mailed forms or household visits can be eliminated with new techniques? And I would be interested in hearing more about using smartphones. The Internet may be horribly outdated even today for a certain segment of the population. Imagine a Census 2020 app – used via Google Glass.