Tag Archives: demographics

The rise of extended-family households in America

Posted on by

New data shows that more Americans are now living with their families:

Almost 1.2 million of the [Washington D.C.] region’s 6 million residents were living with extended family members and friends last year, a 33?percent rise over the past decade. Nationwide, according to recently released 2010 Census statistics, at least 54 million people are in a similar spot.

The figures represent a significant reversal in American lifestyles after decades in which extended-family households fell into disfavor and the nuclear family flourished in the suburbs.

“We haven’t seen anything like this since the Depression,” said Frances Goldscheider, a Brown University sociologist who has studied families and living arrangements. “Overwhelmingly, it’s the recession’s effect on people’s ability to maintain a house. You have the foreclosures on one hand, and no jobs on the other. That’s a pretty double whammy.”…

Although the faltering economy is a major factor in the newfound togetherness, demographers and sociologists say the recession accelerated a shift that was already underway. Fueling the trend: baby boomers caring for aging parents, and the arrival of millions of Hispanic and Asian immigrants, who are more likely to live among several generations under one roof.

On one hand, the article suggests demographic shifts are responsible for this change: growing numbers of immigrants plus the Baby Boomers getting older. On the other hand, the recession has made it more difficult to set up independent households. I assume there has to be some research out there that separates out these different effects and could predict whether this trend will reverse when the American economy improves.

It would be interesting to ask these family members who are living together several questions:

  1. Is this what you had envisioned as family life?
  2. Is the current situation (living with family) good, bad, neutral, etc.?
  3. Would you like to continue living this way if the economy significantly improves?

And years into the future, how exactly will these family members remember these experiences?

Rise in single father families

Posted on by

The number of families led by a single father has grown in the last decade:

Joe Cioffi, a physician from Fairfield, Connecticut, settled for visitation rights to his son after he and the boy’s mother split up. Soon, he decided that wasn’t enough, so he spent four years struggling to win primary custody…

Cioffi’s custody victory and living arrangement encapsulate two distinct changes driving a 27.3 percent jump in U.S. families led by single fathers in the past decade, according to figures released from the 2010 census. While the number of single dads remains small, greater acceptance of shared custody and more unmarried couples have altered traditional ideas of child rearing, demographic experts said.

“It’s time for us to stop assuming that single parents are always women,” said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “There is a visible presence now of single men caring for their kids. We didn’t see that a few decades ago.”…

The growth in single fathers remains a small percentage of the larger shift away from the traditional family. The majority of single parents are still mothers. They head 7.2 percent of all American households, not just those with kids, compared with 2.4 percent of those households led by single fathers, according to census figures.

The illustration from this story suggests that men tend to become single fathers as the result of a court case. I would be interested to know whether younger men ever really envision or aim to be single fathers or whether this is usually the result of unplanned events. This would be a great question to ask today’s college students to see how they envision their future families.

Additionally, as the number of single father families grow, how are the fathers and kids treated – socially, it is an advantage or disadvantage to be a child in a single father family versus a single mother family?

Aging suburbs might change suburban priorities

Posted on by

The demographic shift in America due to the aging of the Baby Boomers could also affect American suburbs:

Although the entire United States is graying, the 2010 Census showed how much faster the suburbs are growing older when compared with the cities. Thanks largely to the baby-boom generation, four in 10 suburban residents are 45 or older, up from 34 percent just a decade ago. Thirty-five percent of city residents are in that age group, an increase from 31 percent in the last census…

“When people think of suburban voters, it’s going to be different than it was years ago,” Frey said. “They used to be people worried about schools and kids. Now they’re more concerned about their own well-being.”

The nation’s baby boomers — 76 million people born between 1946 and 1964 — were the first generation to grow up in suburbia, and the suburbs is where many chose to rear their own children. Now, as the oldest boomers turn 65, demographers and local planners predict that most of them will not move to retirement areas such as Florida and Arizona. They will stay put…

Local governments are starting to grapple with the implications.

The article then goes on to detail the changes some suburbs have made, primarily in the areas of public safety and civic services. Frankly, I was expecting some bigger changes.

Here are a few predictions about how this might have play out. Some of this has already started.

1. Aging suburbanites will be less likely to favor new development that bring in a lot of children in the community. This comes up primarily as a property tax issue in many communities. With many seniors on more fixed incomes, how can they adjust to rising taxes? And if they are long past supporting school-age children, why should they have to pay more money to schools? While one could argue that more money leading to better schools helps everyone in the form of higher property values, this is still a high price to pay.

This could lead to a shift in many communities away from new homes or multi-family units to a more diversified tax base (more industrial and commercial properties) and developments friendly to seniors. A community like Naperville pursued some of these goals in the 1990s and 2000s: seeing the dwindling supply of open land, Naperville pursued some senior-living communities and more commercial and industrial uses to reduce the strain on the schools and help provide some housing that would enable seniors to stay in the community.

2. They will aim to keep their suburbs similar to way they were when they moved in. As the first generation who primarily grew up in suburbs, they will want to preserve their idyllic nature. How this works itself out in each community may differ but this could be an era of hyper-NIMBYism or at least hyper-vigilance to make sure such uses benefit from the older citizens.

 

Witold Rybczynski on McMansions, American housing, suburbs

Posted on by

With the continued housing slump (and a story going around that the $8,000 homebuyer credit of recent years only masked the issues of the housing market), a number of commentators have shared their thoughts about the future of housing in America. Witold Rybczynski weighs in with his prediction for the near future in a piece with the headline of “McMansions dead at last?“:

Owning single-family houses represents a long-established tradition that the U.S. shares with many countries (Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway), but 10 years is long enough for traditions and behavior to change. It is likely that in the future multifamily housing will represent a larger share of the American housing market than the one-in-five new dwellings that has been the historic norm.

What about single-family houses, which will still remain for many people the home of choice? There is some evidence that urban townhomes and infill housing are more popular, as rising gas prices increase the cost of commuting. Higher energy costs also affect heating and air conditioning, which may have the effect of discouraging homebuyers from purchasing large houses with soaring entryways and expansive family rooms. While the evidence is fragmentary—the current reduction in average new house sizes has more to do with the preponderance of first-time buyers than an overall shift in demand—it is clear that the long recessionary cold-shower will dampen the exuberance that characterized the boom years of 2000 to 2005. That will mean smaller houses closer together on smaller lots in inner suburbs, fewer McMansions, and fewer planned communities in the distant hinterland. An alternative scenario is that American optimism will prevail and it will be business as usual, as happened during the boom of the 1950s following the Great Depression, or during the period following the Energy Crisis of 1973, when car buyers, after a brief flirtation with Japanese compact cars, embraced minivans and SUVs. But I wouldn’t count on it.

It sounds like Rybczynski thinks the American housing market will be denser and smaller in the future as a reaction to the last few years. He also makes the point that one big issue plaguing the housing market is more demographic in nature: household formation has slowed down as more people are living with other people rather than starting their own households that require a separate home.

Two other things also seem noteworthy:

1. Rybczynski suggests the reduction in home size is more due to having more first-time buyers than anything else. What about downsizers, particularly Baby Boomers who are retiring or whose children have left the house, that others have talked about?

2. Rybczynski also suggests that we will have fewer planned communities. I assume he is referring to larger planned communities/suburbs that simply may not be possible with low housing demand. But what about a possible uptick in smaller planned developments done by New Urbanists and others who can offer a denser form of suburbia?

Perhaps the fun part about reading pieces like this now is that we likely have years before we can really assess whether something has changed. In the meantime, we can wonder how low home values might go.

The mean population center of Illinois is close to Chicago but this wasn’t always the case

Posted on by

The mean population center of Illinois is relatively close to Chicago:

[B]ased on new data from the U.S. Census, the true center point of Illinois’ population is about 70 miles southwest of Chicago’s bustling Magnificent Mile.

Situated in a corn field east of the intersection of U.S. Route 47 and Illinois Route 113 in Grundy County is the point referred to by the census as the Mean Center of Population for Illinois…

The center point can tell a lot about a state.

It can help explain why Illinois has a state government controlled largely by Chicago politicians.

It can help explain how money gets distributed around the state. It can help explain why some issues — say, gun control — can pit rural interests against urban interests.

“Somewhere close to half the population of the state is within 40 miles of the Loop,” Illinois State University geography professor Mike Sublett said.

This is not too surprising: by far, Chicago is the largest city in the state and the population of the Chicago metropolitan region (2009 estimate of the Illinois portion only – not counting Wisconsin and Indiana populations) is just under 8 million while Illinois’ total population is just over 12.8 million (2010 figures).

But the value of such a measure seems to be not exactly where this mean is located but rather how this population mean has shifted over time. The article goes on to note how the population mean wasn’t always so close to Chicago:

In the 1840s, the center point was located east of Springfield, relatively close to Illinois’ geographical center point in the Logan County community of Chestnut.

But, as Chicago began to grow as an urban center, the population center point began its northward trek along a line nearly mirroring what would become Interstate 55.

The 1880 center of the state’s population was on the south side of Bloomington, near U.S. Route 150 south of where State Farm Insurance Cos. has its Illinois regional office complex.

In 1910, the center moved out of McLean County for the first time in 50 years. The new center was in a farm field just a few miles southeast of Pontiac.

The only time it took a break from its northeasterly trek until recently was in 1940, when the center — then located in Livingston County — briefly moved southward…

The northern movement of the center point also has stalled in recent decades. The 2010 center point near south of Morris in Grundy County is somewhat south of the 2000 and 1990 population centers, located just a few miles away.

Sublett attributes the stall to the rapid growth of Chicago’s western suburbs and the loss of population within the state’s largest city.

“The center point has kind of stagnated. It has just been migrating around Grundy County,” Sublett said.

As I’ve written before regarding the US population mean (see here), the population mean measure seems to make the most sense when placed in a historical context so that people can get a quick look at larger population and migration trends.

I wonder how many Chicago area residents know that the bulk of the state’s early population lived in the central and southern portions of the state and it wasn’t really until the 1840s and 1850s that the population of northeastern Illinois really began to grow and tilt the balance of power in the state.

Proposal in Hungary: give extra votes to families with children

Posted on by

A new right-wing government in Hungary is considering an “unprecedented” proposal: give extra votes to mothers with children.

The conservative Fidesz party has made several controversial decisions since coming to power on a populist rightwing agenda, including a crackdown on the media, but the latest proposal could be prove to be its most contentious.

“Some 20% of society are children,” said József Szájer, a senior Fidesz official and MEP. “This is quite a considerable group that is left out of representation. The interests of these future generations are not represented in decision-making.” He added: “We know at first it seems an unusual idea, but in the 50s it was unusual to give votes to black people; 100 years ago, it was unusual to give votes to women.”…

Szájer said he was inspired by the work of the American demographer Paul Demeny, who developed the concept in 1986. Under Demeny Voting, each parent is given half a vote for each child, permitting a split vote in the event that the parents have differing political loyalties.

However, to counter concerns about the Roma winning more votes, Szájer said in the Hungarian case, the move would have “permitted the passage of a law giving mothers the vote on behalf of a maximum of one child”…

The discourse on Demeny Voting first emerged in Germany and Japan in the 2000s as a solution to concerns that policy development is biased in favour of the elderly rather than young families.

Four things seem noteworthy in this story:

1. One of the reasons for giving out these extra votes is to help give more of a voice to younger generations. Considering differences in opinion in some nations between older and younger generations, this may be a problem to address. But would mothers necessarily be looking out for their children as opposed to themselves when voting?

2. This is also an issue of ethnicity: moving this proposal forward has been influenced by feelings regarding the Roma population. Since this proposal might give too much voting power to the Roma (we can assume they have higher birth rates than the rest of Hungary?), it might be limited to one extra vote per family with children.

3. Although the article doesn’t mention this as a reason, I wonder if some of this is driven by demographics, specifically a low birth rate. Like other industrialized nations, whether Japan or other European nations, Hungary has a low birth rate of 9.60 per 1,000 population (according to the CIA Factbook, #200 out of 222 nations). Perhaps this measure is also an incentive for more families to have children?

4. While an idea like this seem to go against typical democratic procedures of one vote per adult, it reminds me of another voting scheme that was set up to deal with an existing social issue. Could more countries and governments seek different voting structures in order to reach certain ends?

The case of the insistent American Community Survey employee

Posted on by

The decennial US Census has its employees try to contact a household six times (see a quick summary of their procedures here). But the Problem Solver in the Chicago Tribune presents a case where a Census employee working on the American Community Survey (ACS) irritated a Chicago couple:

The first few requests were tolerable. A Census Bureau worker would knock on John and Beverly Scott’s door and ask them to fill out an American Community Survey. The McKinley Park couple would politely decline.

But as the days passed, the visits became more frequent and the requests more urgent.

Some evenings, the doorbell would ring at dinnertime, then again at 10 p.m…

Scott said the requests had become so repetitive and annoying, the couple began pulling the old “out-of-candy-on-Halloween trick.”

“I work afternoons, and I’m not home,” Scott said. “My wife has to sit with the lights off because she doesn’t want to be bothered.”

Often, even that doesn’t work.

“They knock and knock and knock and ring and ring and ring,” Beverly Scott said. “Knocking longer is not going to make me answer the door, and it’s not going to help if we’re not here.”

The final straw, John Scott said, was when a Census Bureau employee told him he would be fined $2,000 if he did not fill out the 48-question survey.

When contacted by the Problem Solver, the regional ACS office said the couple would not be fined (though the government could do this) and they would stop trying to contact the couple (and they did stop).

Surveys that pick out samples that are representative often will work hard to contact the initial respondents. If they can’t make contact or get a response, then they move on to other people who might fit what they are looking for, adding time and resources that need to be spend for the project.

Interestingly, the couple in question also notes that although they filled out their decennial survey, they are not interested in filling out the American Community Survey because they see it as too intrusive:

But they’re not too keen on the American Community Survey, a more in-depth, ongoing questionnaire the Census Bureau conducts to compile information on area demographics, consumer patterns and economic issues.

In particular, the Scotts did not want to answer questions they found too personal, such as inquiries about their income, when they left for work and their health.

“The new questionnaire has gone way over the line,” Scott said. “We have told the representative that we are not going to answer private questions, but they continue to come to our door at all hours of the day and night.”

There were occasional reports of people who felt the same about the 2010 decennial census with some suggesting that a Census should only gather a head count and no other information. But in the future, the US Census has suggested that the ACS will play an increasingly important role as the government looks to collect more frequent data. As the story suggests, the ACS data is important for determining “the Consumer Price Index and how federal funding is allocated.” Rather than waiting every 10 years for a more comprehensive counting, the ACS provides more up-to-data that governments (from the federal to local level), researchers, and the public can utilize.

Data on the growing conservatism of the American public

Posted on by

A number of commentators have explored recent data from Gallup regarding America’s increasing conservatism. Richard Florida takes a stab at the data here. Here are Florida’s conclusions:

Conservatism, at least at the state level, appears to be growing stronger. Ironically, this trend is most pronounced in America’s least well-off, least educated, most blue collar, most economically hard-hit states. Conservatism, more and more, is the ideology of the economically left behind.  The current economic crisis only appears to have deepened conservatism’s hold on America’s states. This trend stands in sharp contrast to the Great Depression, when America embraced FDR and the New Deal.

Liberalism, which is stronger in richer, better-educated, more-diverse, and, especially, more prosperous places, is shrinking across the board and has fallen behind conservatism even in its biggest strongholds. This obviously poses big challenges for liberals, the Obama administration, and the Democratic Party moving forward.

But the much bigger, long-term danger is economic rather than political. This ideological state of affairs advantages the policy preferences of poorer, less innovative states over wealthier, more innovative, and productive ones. American politics is increasingly disconnected from its economic engine.  And this deepening political divide has become perhaps the biggest bottleneck on the road to long-run prosperity.

Interesting thoughts. A few questions about this:

1. Is this a long-term trend or a relatively recent development that could be reversed relatively quickly?

2. How might these demographics tied to each party interact with the public image of the parties that suggests Republicans are about the wealthy and Democrats are on the side of the working class?

3. Does this suggest that the economic engines of America are primarily in Democratic areas (which I assume Florida would see as being located in central cities and the surrounding areas)? Is this the case because of particular Democratic policies or is this the result of other factors?

4. What would an analysis beyond correlations reveal? How do these different factors interact?

New Census figures on Hispanics in US: over 50 million

Posted on by

Data from the 2010 US Census continues to trickle out (see stories on the shifting US mean population center, the growth in the multiracial population, and the population changes in places like Chicago). With almost all states accounted for, demographers expect that the Hispanic population in the United States has exceeded 50 million for the first time. The Hispanic population growth was also higher than expected for the last decade:

In a surprising show of growth, Hispanics accounted for more than half of the U.S. population increase over the last decade, exceeding estimates in most states…

Racial and ethnic minorities are expected to make up an unprecedented 90 percent of the total U.S. growth since 2000, due to immigration and higher birth rates for Latinos…

“This really is a transformational decade for the nation,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings Institution who has analyzed most of the 2010 data. “The 2010 census shows vividly how these new minorities are both leading growth in the nation’s most dynamic regions and stemming decline in others.”

Currently the fastest growing group, Hispanics now comprise 1 in 6 Americans; among U.S. children, Hispanics are roughly 1 in 4.

With relatively low birth rates for whites (though these rates are not as low as other industrialized nations such as Western Europe or Japan), most of the recent population growth in the United States is non-white.

I would really like to hear more experts comment on this sort of data. What do they expect America to be within a few decades? How will these figures affect social life, politics, work, culture, and more?

Interactive map of migration into and out of American counties in 2008

Posted on by

Forbes has an interactive map where you can click on any US county and see where people from that county moved to and where people moving into the county moved from during 2008. Very cool. It would be even better to have more years of data available and be able to see exactly what happened in a place like Cook County in the 2000s with Chicago’s overall population loss.

One complaint: it is hard to distinguish the red lines (outward population movement) from the black lines (inward population movement) when looking at the same county. For example, if you look at the line between DuPage County, IL and Los Angeles County, CA, the line is red even though 252 people moved from LA County to DuPage County and 309 moved in the opposite direction.

h/t Instapundit