WASHINGTON (AP) — Increasingly visible, the number of gay Americans telling the U.S. census they’re living with same-sex partners nearly doubled in the past decade, to about 650,000 couples. And more than 130,000 recorded partners as husband or wife. (more)
Lost in a sea of economic insecurity, America’s young adults are floundering like so many others. (more)
Mickey’s Assignment Desk: Walter Russell Mead sees the flight of blacks from Northern and Midwestern cities to suburbs in the South as a repudiation of the liberal “blue state” social model (unionism, regulation, taxes). Which it may well be. But there’s another angle: the 1996 welfare reform, and the message it sent. Working hypothesis: Welfare–specifically the old AFDC program–in essence told blacks in the North it was OK to stay put in their declining former ghetto communities. If people stayed, instead of moving in search of jobs, the checks would keep coming. The ’96 Clinton/Gingrich reform said: don’t count on welfare to be there for you. It is time-limited. You’ll have to work. If there are no jobs where you live, better move somewhere else. Result: Blacks moved to where the jobs are, which is the red states and the suburbs. … Problem with working hypothesis: Is it black middle class that’s moving? If so, how are they on welfare? Possible answers to problem: Welfare’s penetration of the African-American community is easy to underestimate. According to a startling statistic from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics (publicized, if I remember, by Daniel Patrick Moynihan) almost three-quarters of black children who turned 18 in the late 1980s had spent at least a year on AFDC. Given the tremendous exposure of the black community to welfare, a change in its requirements could send a powerful cultural signal. Plus, tipping point! … And kids who might in earlier decades have fallen back on welfare knew it wasn’t going to be there and made other, better choices. … Also, not all those who moved were “middle class” as opposed to hard up. … Alternative, nastier, Charles Murrayesque theory: Food stamps are the new welfare–they’re the only cash or cash-like entitlement the poor can count on. But they are set at a uniform level nationwide, and it’s not a wildly generous level. Might as well move to where living costs are lower. If you read Nicholas Lemann’s Promised Land, you know that an African American food stamp economy was already growing up in the South decades ago, so there may be something to this. … There are lots of other factors of course, many of them mentioned in the NYT‘s account: A decline of white racism in the South, cultural affinities, including a desire to be in communities where the bosses and elites are also African American, a flight from crime and lousy schools. Also, blacks were basically doing what everyone else was doing between 2000 and 2010 (though everyone else moved to the West as well as the South, apparently). The difference is blacks hadn’t done that before (e.g. in the 60s, 70s. 80s and 90s). … [via Newsalert, @TomBevanRCP] (more)
More Hispanics were counted in the census than anticipated, reflecting the difficulty of calculating the size of the Hispanic population in states where the communities are small and growing rapidly, according to a new study. (more)
Despite the slowest decade of population growth since the Great Depression, the USA remains the world’s fastest-growing industrialized nation and the globe’s third-most populous country at a time when some are actually shrinking. (more)
PRINCETON, NJ — Each of the 10 states losing congressional seats as a result of the newly announced 2010 census reapportionment process is politically Democratic, based on a Gallup political identification measure from the first six months of this year. Five of the eight states gaining seats skew Republican. (more)
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The population of the United States grew 9.7% to 308.7 million people over the past decade — the slowest rate of growth since the Great Depression — the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday. (more)
Texas will gain four seats in the House of Representatives, while Ohio and New York will each lose two, according to the results of the 2010 Census, released Tuesday morning. (more)
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. (more)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of the working-age poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s as the recession threw millions of people out of work last year, leaving one in seven Americans in poverty. (more)
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs signed up for a Twitter account in February, and since then has used the new medium to comment on current events, make announcements before the press is notified, and even break news. (more)
A Brooklyn congressman says he is worried that reports of fraud at a local U.S. Census office are “just the tip of the iceberg.” (more)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — It was a finely honed machine, this United States Census team, and it had a good run. But in the coming days and weeks, many of its members will experience the pain of unemployment — once again. (more)
Since they began making follow-up house calls in early May, census takers have encountered vitriol, menace and flashes of violence. They have been shot at with pellet guns and hit by baseball bats. They have been confronted with pickaxes, crossbows and hammers. They’ve had lawn mowers pushed menacingly toward them and patio tables thrown their way. They have been nibbled by ducks, bitten by pit bulls and chased by packs of snarling dogs. (more)
“America, real journalism has been dead for a long time now,” announced David Shuster’s favorite investigative journalist James O’Keefe in a Tuesday blog post. “With $1500 Hannah Giles and I were able to break a story that the New York Times couldn’t have broken no matter how many times they mortgaged their building.” Continued O’Keefe, who is most famous for exposing criminal activity at numerous branches of the community activist group ACORN: “On April 27, 2010, I got a job with the United States Census Bureau in New Jersey. With a hidden camera, I caught four Census supervisors encouraging enumerators to falsify information on their time sheets. Over the course of two days of training, I was paid for four hours of work I never did.” (more)
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Paulo Sergio Alfaro-Sanchez, an illegal immigrant being held at a detention center in Washington state, had no idea that the federal government would count him in the census. (more)
Amy Schmalbach doesn’t answer her door when she’s home alone with her toddler son. But she opened it for a U.S. Census Bureau worker on May 4.
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NEW YORK (AP) — It sounds simple enough. Knock on some doors, ask some questions, get some answers. (more)
Five states — New York, California, Texas, Arizona and Florida — are close to losing out on congressional seats because of lackluster participation in the U.S. census. (more)
Six years ago, Colorado was a Republican state. Now, suddenly, it’s not. How that happened is the subject of a new book called The Blueprint, written by long-time Colorado political reporter Adam Schrager and former Republican state representative Rob Witwer. (more)
