Guide to the census

GUIDE TO

THE CENSUS

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GUIDE TO

THE CENSUS

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GUIDE TO

THE CENSUS

Frank Bass

BLOOMBERG; PRESS.

A n Impri^t)Qfj-

Cover design: C. Wallace.

Cover image: United States © Pavel Khorenyan/ iStockphoto.

Copyright © 2013 by Frank Bass. All rights reserved.

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Library o f Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Bass, Frank.

Guide to the census / Frank Bass.

p. cm. - (Bloomberg financial series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-32801-9 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-41989-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-43395-9 (ebk);

ISBN 978-1-118-41660-0 (ebk)

1. United States-Census. 2. United States-Census-Methodology. 3. United States-Statistical

acrvicca. 4. U nited States. Bureau o f th e C entua. I. '¡"¡ill

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This book is dedicated to my fam ily: M y wife Lisa, who has been

unfailingly supportive and patient during the writing o f this book, even

during the most stressful o f circumstances and largest o f anim al

breakouts; my children, Robin, John a n d Will, who have invariably

lifted m y spirits when most needed; my parents, Charles and the

late M ary Lucy Bass, whose love and advice have always been

incomparable; and my brothers, Richard a nd B.J., who read almost as

much as I d id as children, a nd who have always encouraged me.

Contents

A cknow ledgm ents xi

Introduction xiii

PART I: GUIDE TO THE DECENNIAL CENSUS

CHAPTER 1

The Evolution of the Census 3

Who Relies on the Census? 5

Understanding the Current Census 11

Following Census Results 13

Conclusion 14

Notes 15

CHAPTER 2

Understanding Census Geography 17

Narrowing Geographical Scope 18

Working with Standard Geographies 20

Avoiding Geographic Confusion 22

Working with Very Small Geographies 25

Conclusion 28

N otes 28

CHAPTER 3

Understanding Basic Census Counts 29

Determining Political Representation 30

Creating Political Boundaries 31

Understanding the Fundamentals o f Redistricting Files 33

Analyzing Age, Gender, and Detailed Race Data 35

Conclusion 37

Notes 38

viii Contents

CHAPTER 4

Analyzing Critical Relationships 41

Understanding Household Relationships 42

Digging Deeper into Household Relationships 45

Making Sense of Summary File 2 46

Notes 48

CHAPTER 5

Working with H ousing Data 49

Grasping the Basics of Housing 50

Understanding Populations within Households 52

Conclusion 54

Notes 55

CHAPTER 6

A nalyzing Race and Ethnicity 57

Understanding Emerging Groups 58

Analyzing Tribal Affiliations 62

Conclusion 63

Notes 68

PART II: THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY

CHAPTER 7

Using the American Community Survey 71

Resolving Expensive Data Collection 72

Understanding Potential Weaknesses 74

Modifying Future Surveys 74

Conclusion 76

Notes 77

CHAPTER 8

M aking Sense of H ousing 79

Comparing ACS Housing Data with Decennial Census 80

Assessing Populations with Housing Data 81

Using Ancillary Figures for Insight 84

Conclusion 85

Notes 87

CHAPTER 9

Learning about Education 89

Correlating Education and Economic Achievement 90

Discovering Geographic Patterns in Educational Attainment 92

Contents ix

Assessing Strengths and Shortcomings of ACS Education Data 97

Conclusion 99

Notes 102

CHAPTER 10

Speaking the Languages 103

Speaking the Language 104

Conclusion 110

Notes 110

CHAPTER 11

Working w ith Occupations 111

Understanding Types of Jobs 112

Analyzing Specific Occupations 113

Analyzing Military Service 117

Conclusion 120

Notes 120

CHAPTER 12

A nalyzing Transportation Trends 123

Establishing Vehicle Use 124

Determining C om m uting Patterns 124

Gauging the Importance o f Com m uting Patterns 128

Conclusion 131

Notes 131

CHAPTER 13

A ssessing Income 133

Understanding Income Variability 134

M casu iin g Poveny 135

Assessing Income Distribution 139

Conclusion 143

Notes 144

CHAPTER 14

A nalyzing Health Data 145

Understanding Types o f Health Insurance 146

Parsing Disability Data 146

Understanding N utrition Data 148

Overlooking an Obvious Health Data Point 150

Conclusion 152

Notes 152

X Contents

PART III: RESOURCES

APPENDIX A

Using American FactFinder

APPENDIX B

Using Raw Data Files

APPENDIX C

Glossary of Census Terms

APPENDIX D

O nline Resources

APPENDIX E

M apping Census Data

APPENDIX F

Comparing Census and American Com m unity

Survey Characteristics

About the Website

About the Author

157

171

197

221

225

231

235

237

Index 239

Acknowledgments

I ’ve been privileged to work with a number of people over the years who have

provided me with their expertise, knowledge, and patience. I have to begin

by thanking the late Freda McVay at Texas Tech University, who shooed an

incorrigible introvert out the door of her basic reporting class and told me

to come back when I had a good story. Jennifer Allen, formerly of Columbus

Commercial Dispatch, was the best editor that any cub reporter could have. Jim

Tharpe, managing editor at the Alabama Journal, guided a team of extremely

young reporters to a Pulitzer Prize and taught me more than anyone about

the craft of journalism and the possibilities of data. I bow to the entire staff

of the late, lamented Houston Post, who taught me that you didn’t have to

drink and be a curmudgeon to have fun in journalism, although it certainly

helped. Caleb Solomon, now managing editor at the Boston Globe, was kind

enough at the Wall Street Journal to provide me with computer software, an

expense account to roam my native Texas, and a wealth of knowledge about

business journalism. I was blessed at the Associated Press to be hired by Bill

Ahearn, a visionary who grasped the possibilities of data-oriented reporting

even before the organization had thought to acquire personal computers for

its writers; supervised by Sandy Johnson, an editor of impeccable judgment

and grace under pressure; and managed by John Solomon, whose enthusiasm

fo r b ig sto rie s a n d olcill in p r e s e n tin g th e m wan (a n d re m a in s ) u n p a ra lle le d in

the business.

O ne hopes my best work is not behind me, especially if that one is

Susan Goldberg, my editor at Bloomberg News. In supervising the Washington

bureau and our state and municipality team, Susan has proven many times

that patience and enthusiasm aren’t mutually exclusive character traits. I owe

a considerable debt to Mike Riley, editor at Bloomberg Government, who

hired me for a good job and sheltered me from some not-so-good ones.

I’m also fortunate to work frequently for Amanda Bennett, our projects and

investigations editor who has probably forgotten about more of her award￾winning stories than most newsrooms have earned, and Bob Simison, our

xii Acknowledgments

in-house “story doctor” who generously serves as a “story trauma surgeon” in

my case. Mark McQuillan in Washington and Flynn McRoberts in Chicago

have provided me with superb guidance, good humor, and mild obsessive￾compulsive editing behaviors that have frequently kept me out of trouble.

I may have written this book; Matt Winkler wrote our book on writing

books, and I owe him thanks for his vote of confidence in green-lighting this

project, as well as apologies for any deviations from the proper use of the

mother tongue.

“It takes a village,” Paul Overberg, a journalism colleague at USA Today

and census guru extraordinaire, reassured me a couple of years ago when I

e-mailed with a panic-stricken message about an error in my Gini coefficient

calculations. 1 owe a considerable debt to both Paul and Steve Doig, formerly

of the Miami Herald and now teaching at Arizona State University, for their

patience in showing me the possibilities of the census through Investigative

Reporters and Editors workshops and conferences. They’ve provided assis￾tance throughout the years without making me feel like the village idiot. I’ve

also been lucky enough to benefit from the accumulated wisdom of top-notch

researchers and data savants, such as Mark Horvit, former Post colleague and

executive director of IRE; Jeff Porter at the University of Missouri and the

Association for Health Care Journalists; Bill Frey at the Brookings Institution;

D ’Vera Cohn at the Pew Research Center; Michelle Levander at the Univer￾sity of Southern California’s Reporting on Health project; and, I often think,

the entire support and public information staffs at U.S. Census Bureau, SAS

Institute (with a particular shout-out to Beverly Brown), and rhe University

of Minnesota Population Center. All have been unfailingly gracious in the

face of many cringe-inducing questions from the author.

Any and all errors and omissions are mine, and reflect only an occasional

lapse of poor judgment on the above people who have helped me through

the years.

Introduction

Not everything that can be measured matters, and not everything that matters

can be measured.

Albert Einstein

No reasonable person would argue that the Census Bureau’s compilation

of data is anything other than an extraordinarily helpful addition to our

understanding of the United States. Every decade, Americans use the bureau’s

data to reorganize the representative structure that guides the world’s oldest

continuous democracy. Every year, Americans take demographic, economic,

social, and housing data from the American Community Survey and use it to

direct about $450 billion in tax money to specific programs. Schools get built,

roads are paved, hungry people are given food, and sick people get healed as

a result of accurate, timely data.

The numbers are also used for less-tangible purposes. The figures help

us define ourselves. More than 30 years ago, Hispanics didn’t exist as part

of the traditional decennial census. In 1980, the first time that Latinos were

actually counted, there were 14.6 million. More than 50 million Americans

described themselves as Hispanics in the 2010 census. There weren’t any

computer-based occupations in the 1950 census; nine of the 526 detailed

occupations listed in the annual American Community Survey include the

phrase “computer.”

Revolutions are easy. Evolutions take time.

It’s important to limit expectations. It’s helpful to understand the limits

of quantification when it comes to economics, and all other quantitative

sciences, for that matter. In a 1968 speech at the University of Kansas, less

than three months before he was killed, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy

observed that the gross national product, perhaps the single most important

economic indicator of the age, suffered a few major shortcomings. The figure,

Kennedy said, failed to “allow for the health of our children, the quality of

xiii

xiv Introduction

their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our

poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate

or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our

courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor

our devotion to country, it measures everything in short, except that which

makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except

why we are proud that we are Americans.”

Ultimately, the limits to the billions of individual records contained in

the decennial census and the annual American Community Survey are set

by the users imagination and creativity. Demographic, social, economic, and

housing changes can help tell the story of a single city block or a nation. The

data can measure the change over a year, or over a generation. They can be

useful or they can be extraneous.

Like any other quantitative exercise, analyzing census data won’t yield

answers. It will only give you the best questions, and frequently, that’s the

most difficult part of the exercise.