Census: Rich Areas Richer, Poor Get Poorer

Census Bureau Data: Richest Counties Get Richer, Poorest Get Poorer
Source: ABC News Kentucky Has County With Lowest Median Household Income; Richest 3 in Virginia The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, at least judging by the most extreme neighborhoods for median household income in the latest Census Bureau data. The Census' American Community Survey, released this week, provides detailed neighborhood data, including languages spoken in a home, commute time and income levels. The poorest county, Owsley County, Ky., had the lowest median household income o...

Schedule for Week of December 19th: Happy Holidays!
by CalculatedRisk on 12/18/2010 11:42:00 AM This is a holiday week (Merry Christmas!), but there will still be plenty of economic releases. There are two key housing reports: November existing Home Sales on Wednesday, and New Home Sales on Thursday. ----- Monday, Dec 20th ----- 8:30 AM ET: Chicago Fed National Activity Index (November). This is a composite index of other data. Morning: Moody's/REAL Commercial Property Price Index (CPPI) for October. ----- Tuesday, Dec 21st ----- 11:00 AM: Th...

Washington area is wealthiest and most educated region in the nation, census data show
The Washington area's affluence and education levels make it the wealthiest and most educated region in the nation, according to Census data released Tuesday that reflect five years of relative prosperity compared with the rest of the country. This Story More D.C. area commuters leaving the driving to others, Census data show Commuters data Poll: Have you changed your commute? Washington area is wealthiest and most educated region in the nation, Census data show U.S. Census Bureau: American C...

Family Report Shows Brokenness in U.S. Homes
Only 45 percent of American teenagers have spent their childhood with both parents legally married to one another, according to a recent report. The Family Research Council's "U.S. Index of Belonging and Rejection" also found that 55 percent of U.S. teenagers live in families where their biological parents have rejected each other. Read the entire report here . "We have undertaken this study because, bad though it may be, the out-of-wedlock Birth Rate is not the key measure of family intactne...

Which States Will Gain/Lose House Seats?
The Census Bureau will release its official state population totals next week along with the resulting allotment of House seats for the next decade. Cook Political Report: "For some states, there isn't much suspense. Georgia, Nevada, and Utah are all but certain to gain an additional seat in the House, while Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are all but certain to lose a seat and Ohio is all but certain to lose two seats. However, much like NCAA ba...

Mass. expected to lose House seat through Census
BOSTON — Massachusetts is expected to lose a Congressional Seat when the new Census figures are released. The U.S. Census Bureau will release the results of its once-a-decade count at 11 a.m. Tuesday, and all signs are toward a population shift from the North to the South — and a shift in U.S. House seats along with it. Massachusetts currently has 10 House seats. If, as expected, it loses one on Tuesday, state lawmakers will have to decide how to get rid of one congressman. Populati...

What's good for CEOs is good for the USA?
What Good For CEOs ... by digby "I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success,” President Obama told 20 CEOs this morning, according to a source in the room. “We want to be boosters because when you do well, America does well."Really?Wall Street banks are on pace to pay out some $143 billion in compensation for 2010, just shy of their record year of 2007. But given the widespread layoffs of mid-level employees as a result of the Financial Crisis, average compensation set a ...

Housing Starts and Vacant Units
by CalculatedRisk on 12/17/2010 01:36:00 PM Here is an update to a graph showing total Housing Starts and the percent vacant housing units (owner and rental) in the U.S. Over a year ago, I used this chart to argue that there would be no "V shaped" recovery, and that Housing Starts wouldn't rebound rapidly. See: Housing Starts and Vacant Units: No "V" Shaped Recovery. In that earlier post, I also argued that the Unemployment Rate would remain high throughout 2010. Hey, housing matters! Note: Ho...

Serf And Turf
Don't like the way wealth is distributed? Then you can join congressional Democrats and grump about it, or you can get some wealth for yourself. Ahh, if only that were true. The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that real median household income in the United States in 2009 was $49,777, not statistically different from the 2008 median. The nation's official Poverty rate in 2009 was 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008 — the second statistically significant annual increase in the po...

It's a borough crawl to work
Here's something else to drive New Yorkers crazy -- residents in four of the city's boroughs logged the nation's longest average commute times to work. Staten Island was the worst, at 42.5 minutes, the US Census Bureau said. A close second was Queens, at 42 minutes, followed by Brooklyn, with 41.6 minutes The Bronx scored 41.3 and Manhattanites logged 30.3 minutes. If you live in Kings County, you might envy residents of King County, Texas -- they boast the nation's shortest average travel...

Black segregation falls, but Latino and Asian separation up
California's relatively small and slow-growing black population is experiencing far less residential segregation that it did in years past, but its rapidly growing Latino and Asian American populations are experiencing more, a new nationwide study of housing patterns indicates. The study, "Racial and Ethnic Separation in the Neighborhoods: Progress at a Standstill," was written by John R. Logan of Brown University and Brian J. Stults of Florida State University, was based on data from decennia...

Latest Indicators: Jobless Claims Dip; Trade Gap Grows; Housing Starts Up
What is this? The number of people filing first-time claims for jobless benefits decreased by 3,000 last week, to 420,000, the Employment and Training Administration says. Bloomberg News says that signals "a labor market that is on the mend" in part because the slight decline was unexpected and in part because claims have now dipped in three of the past four weeks. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Economic Analysis says the nation's Deficit "on trade in goods and services" widened to $127.2 billion in t...

Census Bureau: Higher-than-Average Poverty Rates for Most Counties on U.S.-Mexico Border
Thursday, December 16, 2010 By Dan Joseph Border vehicle fence in New Mexico (El Paso district). (Photo courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol) (CNSNews.com) - U.S. counties that border Mexico have Poverty rates well above the national average and median income levels that are well below the national average. According to the Census Bureau’s Small Area Poverty and Income Estimates for 2009, the average percentage of those living below the Poverty level in the 23 counties that border...

More D.C. area commuters leaving the driving to others, census data show
Network News X Profile View More Activity READ MORE Traffic & Roads See the latest alerts, a construction calendar, traffic cams and more to help you get around Washington. >> Dr. Gridlock is here to help >> Get transit tips | Traffic By the numbers DataPost Looking for research help, deeper understanding of the day's news, or do you just like numbers? Here's are some of the most interesting, searchable databases developed by The Washington Post and other local and national organizations ...

Housing Starts increase slightly in November
by CalculatedRisk on 12/16/2010 08:57:00 AM Click on graph for larger image in new window. Total Housing Starts were at 555 thousand (SAAR) in November, up 3.9% from the revised October rate of 534 thousand, and up 16% from the all time record low in April 2009 of 477 thousand (the Lowest Level since the Census Bureau began tracking Housing Starts in 1959). The increase this month was due to single-family starts, but the level is still very low. Single-family starts increased 6.9% to 465 thou...

Americas 10 Poorest Counties in Appalachia, Deep South or on Indian Reservations
Friday, December 17, 2010 By Dan Joseph (CNSNews.com) - America’s 10 poorest counties, both in terms of the percentage of those living below the Poverty level and median household income, lie either on Indian Reservations, are in the Deep South or are found in the Coal Mining areas of eastern Kentucky.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Area Poverty and Income Estimates for 2009, the 10 U.S. counties with the highest percentages of their population living in Poverty are: 1. Z

Why the Census may be bad news for Missouri Democrats
WASHINGTON — The Census will make clear on Tuesday what has been speculated about in Missouri political circles for a while: The state could lose a Congressional Seat effective the 2012 Elections. Democrats could be most at risk. Going into the 2011 Congress, they will hold only three seats in the nine-member House delegation because the party just lost Rep. Ike Skelton's district in the November Midterm Elections. But they might have trouble keeping that many. It depends on how the Rep...

Mass. expected to lose House seat through Census
BOSTON — Massachusetts is expected to lose a Congressional Seat when the new Census figures are released. The U.S. Census Bureau will release the results of its once-a-decade count at 11 a.m. Tuesday, and all signs are toward a population shift from the North to the South — and a shift in U.S. House seats along with it. Massachusetts currently has 10 House seats. If, as expected, it loses one on Tuesday, state lawmakers will have to decide how to get rid of one congressman. Populati...

Best Places for Senioritis
Retirement has never been a hotter topic. The first wave of Baby Boomers—men and women born in 1946—will reach Retirement Age next year. More than 3 million Americans will turn 65 in 2011, the largest group to become eligible for Social Security in a single year. Most of these prospective Retirees are expected to remain in their current homes. Only 4 percent of the nation’s 36.8 million Senior Citizens (65 or older) moved to a new residence in 2008, the latest year analyzed by the U.S. C

American Segregation At An All-Time Low
This is interesting because it’s evidence that things really are changing and in a positive direction. It’s going to take a long time to heal the racial divide that was set forth at the founding of our nation and embedded shamefully in our very Constitution when it was first written. But maybe we’re on our way to the realization of the dream of One Nation Under God, Indivisible. This also has implications for Congressional re-districting in the future…should be interest...

Sarah Garland: How Will Suburban Schools Handle the New Influx of Immigrants?
In the next 20 years, the schools in need of the most help may not be the schools in inner cities like Newark or Detroit. Instead, they may be in far-flung suburbs and exurbs, where immigrants are flocking in increasing numbers, according to new projections from the U.S. Census Bureau. We've known for a while that the new immigrant frontier was in the suburbs, but are education officials and reformers paying attention? Hispanics are the fastest growing suburban group, and, as the New York Time...

Ethnic melting pot stretches to suburbs
EVERETT — Ottavio’s barber shop, with its owner’s accent still tinged with traces of his native Sicily, bustles a few doors down from a Haitian Grocery Store and across the road from a kiosk where immigrants can wire money to Brazil. Welcome to Main Street in Everett, where the percentage of immigrants has tripled since 1990 to 33 percent, one of the biggest increases in the state, according to US Census Bureau estimates released yesterday. It is a shift repeated across the st...

Census Data Show Immigrants Making Path to Suburbs
WASHINGTON — Immigrants fanned out across the United States in the last decade, settling in greater numbers in small towns and suburbs rather than in the cities where they typically moved when they first came to this country, new Census data show. Following jobs to rural and suburban areas, in industries like construction and the food business, immigrant populations rose more than 60 percent in places where immigrants made up fewer than 5 percent of the population in 2000. In areas that h...

Housing Starts and New Permits Remain Weak in November
As the Housing Market continues to sputter, new construction has been very slow. Although Housing Starts rose 3.9% in November to 555,000, they didn't nearly overcome the 13.0% decline experienced over the two months prior. The Census Bureau also reports that new permits, which are more of a leading indicator, fell by 4.0% last month. The new home construction market remains relatively lifeless. While it might seem that there could be reason to hope for a new trend here, given the small rise in...

Looking at Income Class and Votes for Obama
In light of the Census Bureau’s release on Tuesday of data from the American Community Survey, a blogger from The Big Picture who writes under the pseudonym Invictus suggested we investigate how income may have affected the 2008 Presidential Election. Both Democrats and Republicans claim to be the champions of the middle-class and poor; who actually won their votes? With Invictus’s help, I put together the  scatterplot below. The horizontal axis shows median household income for...