Social Explorer

While you are on campus, you can access https://www.socialexplorer.com/ through a guest account that lets you make demographic maps. The map below shows where municipal government employees are.

Mapping demographics

NASA's Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) has posted a series of census maps.

Or an even more challenging map is MapsByNik's series of Nobody Lives Here maps.

Is religion an interesting dimension? Someone mapped out all of Britain's Jedi.

More Census details

A Rutgers Ph.D. student got a piece published on Huffington Post that says "Black Latinos Are Almost Invisible In The Census. We Can Fix That."

She builds both on her doctoral research project as well as personal experiences. The pull quote of the article is:

"Latino is not a race, it is an ethnicity. Ethnicity describes a person’s culture, language, heritage and geography. Race, on the other hand, is about how others see us. And although most social scientists agree that race is a social construct, they also contend that it does matter; our experiences are undeniably shaped by our race."

 How many more questions have this sort of complexity built into them?

Census update

As a update to an earlier post about the US Census:

• The NY Times published an Opinion piece called Census Sabotage by David Leonhardt. "Counting every person in the country isn’t cheap, and the census appears to have been underfunded by about $230 million over the last two years, Schanzenbach and Strain explain.
• McClatchy has identified the rural South as an area that could be undercounted.
• Newsday writes about a proposed question that has immigration advocates worried

2020 Census woes

The Washington Post recently ran a headline that said The 2020 Census is in deep trouble. And, explained the opinion piece, the stakes could be high:

It is already woefully underfunded, understaffed, underappreciated and behind schedule. But it will determine, in a major way, the future of our political parties, if not our democracy.

The nominee to run the 2020 Census has just been withdrawn.

Recently, more than 160 mayors sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross confronting him with the realities of the situation. Citylab reports that the letter raises serious concerns while pointing out that the census is a constitutionally mandated activity that has been proudly undertaken since 1790. Of course, in the dynamic landscape of this administration, there are questions regarding whether Ross will still be around in 2020.

If we wait long, it will simply be too late to fix it. It takes years for Bureau to staff up and build the necessary infrastructure for the decennial census. What can be done? Should states intervene? Or will lawsuits by groups like the NAACP help?  Keep watching.

(In the meantime, explore TIGERweb)

Household wealth

The latest income numbers from the Census are pretty amazing.  They show that white households have, on average, 20 times as much wealth as black or Hispanic households.  That is clearly more than just a result of predatory lending.  What does it mean for planning?

New Census numbers: Hispanics outnumber African-Americans

The 2010 aggregate Census numbers are out for New Jersey and one of the most notable findings is that the 1.5 million Hispanics now represent the largest minority group in the Garden State.  On the whole, New Jersey grew 4.5% which has political ramifications both within and beyond New Jersey.

California's Census

PlaNetizen explains that it could be +/- about 1.5 million.

Census jobs

Even if the economy is tough, the United States needs to get its decennial head count to figure out whether New Jersey gets to keep all of its congressional districts. And that means that the Bureau of the Census is going to need some extra help. And, while they'll be needing some folks to go into the field, they may also need some more spatial thinkers, since their results are fundamentally geographic. If you are interested in applying, you should check out their employment page.

Central Jersey is getting more crowded

We didn't really need the US Census Bureau to tell us this, but new estimates show that the counties around Rutgers have continued to experience real population growth. Built out counties, like Union County, aren't growing much (0.41%). Those with some remaining undeveloped land have seen 5-8% growth rates (Somerset - 8.76%, Middlesex - 5.13%).

But to make sure you really see the patterns around you, the Home News has a Google Map mash-up that shows you the results for every municipality in Central Jersey. As you can see in the example above, Lebanon Borough grew over 75%! Way to grow guys.