Guide to the Census E-Book

Frank Bass

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Bloomberg Professional
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 266

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

How to parse, analyze, and incorporate census data This handy resource offers a reference guide for anyone interested in tailoring specific Census data to their needs. It includes computer coding (SAS v9.x) software for extracting targeted data from thousands of Census files, as well as primers on using online tools and mapping software for analyzing data. The book offers thorough coverage of all aspects of census data including its historical significance, suggestions for parsing housing, occupation, transportation, economic, health, and other data from the census, and much more. * Offers an guide to analyzing Census data that can have an impact on financial markets as well as housing and economic data boding ill or well for the future of the economy * It includes computer coding (SAS v9.x) scripts for extracting specific data from Census files * Offers guidance on using thousands of variables from Census results released every year and American Community Survey data now released every year * The only one-stop guide to analyzing and using annual and decennial Census data Bass offers a practical guide for leveraging information compiled by the Census to further research as well as business interests.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Series

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Guide to the Decennial Census

Chapter 1: The Evolution of the Census

Who Relies on the Census?

Understanding the Current Census

Following Census Results

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 2: Understanding Census Geography

Narrowing Geographical Scope

Working with Standard Geographies

Avoiding Geographic Confusion

Working with Very Small Geographies

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 3: Understanding Basic Census Counts

Determining Political Representation

Creating Political Boundaries

Understanding the Fundamentals of Redistricting Files

Analyzing Age, Gender, and Detailed Race Data

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 4: Analyzing Critical Relationships

Understanding Household Relationships

Digging Deeper into Household Relationships

Making Sense of Summary File 2

Notes

Chapter 5: Working with Housing Data

Grasping the Basics of Housing

Understanding Populations within Households

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 6: Analyzing Race and Ethnicity

Understanding Emerging Groups

Analyzing Tribal Affiliations

Conclusion

Notes

Part II: The American Community Survey

Chapter 7: Using the American Community Survey

Resolving Expensive Data Collection

Understanding Potential Weaknesses

Modifying Future Surveys

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 8: Making Sense of Housing

Comparing ACS Housing Data with Decennial Census

Assessing Populations with Housing Data

Using Ancillary Figures for Insight

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 9: Learning about Education

Correlating Education and Economic Achievement

Discovering Geographic Patterns in Educational Attainment

Assessing Strengths and Shortcomings of ACS Education Data

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 10: Speaking the Languages

Speaking the Language

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 11: Working with Occupations

Understanding Types of Jobs

Analyzing Specific Occupations

Analyzing Military Service

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 12: Analyzing Transportation Trends

Establishing Vehicle Use

Determining Commuting Patterns

Gauging the Importance of Commuting Patterns

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 13: Assessing Income

Understanding Income Variability

Measuring Poverty

Assessing Income Distribution

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 14: Analyzing Health Data

Understanding Types of Health Insurance

Parsing Disability Data

Understanding Nutrition Data

Overlooking an Obvious Health Data Point

Conclusion

Notes

Part III: Resources

Appendix A: Using American FactFinder

Simple Population Count

Simple Income Lookup

Appendix B: Using Raw Data Files

Census Tables

American Community Survey Tables

Appendix C: Glossary of Census Terms

Population Characteristics

Living Quarters

Housing Characteristics

Derived Measures

Appendix D: Online Resources

Appendix E: Mapping Census Data

Appendix F: Comparing Census and American Community Survey Characteristics

Comparable, 2000–2010 Census and ACS

Comparable Across Decennial Census Only

Characteristics That Should Not Be Compared

Characteristics That Cannot Be Compared (No 2000 Census Data)

About the Website

About the Author

Index

Since 1996, Bloomberg Press has published books for financial professionals on investing, economics, and policy affecting investors. Titles are written by leading practitioners and authorities, and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

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Cover design: C. Wallace.

Cover image: United States © Pavel Khorenyan/ iStockphoto.

Copyright © 2013 by Frank Bass. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of 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 services. 4. United States. Bureau of the Census. I. Title. HA37.U55B373 2013 317.3--dc23 2012041636

This book is dedicated to my family: My wife Lisa, who has been unfailingly supportive and patient during the writing of this book, even during the most stressful of circumstances and largest of animal breakouts; my children, Robin, John and Will, who have invariably lifted my spirits when most needed; my parents, Charles and the late Mary Lucy Bass, whose love and advice have always been incomparable; and my brothers, Richard and B.J., who read almost as much as I did as children, and who have always encouraged me.

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 for big stories and skill in presenting them was (and remains) unparalleled in the business.

One 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 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. I 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 assistance 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 University 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 the 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 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 user’s 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.

PART I

Guide to the Decennial Census

CHAPTER 1

The Evolution of the Census

Thomas Jefferson was unhappy.

Two years into his job as the nation’s first secretary of state, Jefferson had recently received the 56-page results of the first-ever census, required by the U.S. Constitution. The new government had sent about 650 U.S. marshals door-to-door, spending slightly more than a penny per person to finish the count on August 2, 1790. The number of white men older than 16, white men younger than 16, white females, all other free people, and slaves had fallen short of expectations. Instead of counting more than 4 million Americans, the U.S. marshals in charge of the census came up with 3,982,214 people.

“We know in fact the omissions have been very great,” Jefferson wrote to his boss, George Washington.1

The nation’s first census certainly wasn’t perfect. The succeeding 22 censuses haven’t been perfect, either. Technically speaking, a census provides a snapshot of every American on a given day, now usually April 1. It’s never that simple, though. Some people aren’t counted; others are counted multiple times. Some people tell the truth about how much they earn, where they work, and who they are; others lie. It’s an imperfect solution in an imperfect world.

Like our form of democracy that originated with Aristotle, the idea of a census had its origins in ancient times. God commanded the Israelites in Exodus to calculate tabernacle upkeep taxes with a census. The oldest existing census records come from China’s Han Dynasty in the second century A.D., showing nearly 58 million people.2 When the constitutional convention began in Philadelphia in 1787, delegates had to decide how best to design the House of Representatives, the lower body of the bicameral legislature. There was sharp disagreement over whether states should be awarded House seats based on population, or some combination of population and property. Delegates eventually agreed that a population-based census—with slaves counting as 3/5 of a person—would be the best tool for allocating representatives.

Other than the undercount, the first census held few surprises. New York was the nation’s biggest city, with 33,131 people. Philadelphia ranked second, with 28,522, and Boston was the nation’s third-largest city, with a population of 18,320. Then, as now, New York remains the largest city in the nation. Philadelphia and Boston, though still large, lost large numbers of their residents during the last half of the twentieth century. Not all cities remain as prominent: Newport, Rhode Island, whose 1790 population of 6,716 as shown in Table 1.1 made it the eighth-largest place in the nation, now has 24,672 residents, which didn’t even put it in the top 1,000 largest places in the United States in 2010.

Table 1.1 Ten Largest U.S. Cities, 1790 Census

As a predictive model, the first census contained far too little data to be useful, with only six questions:

1. The name of the household head.

2. The number of free white males older than 16.

3. The number of free white males younger than 16.

4. The number of free white females.

5. The number of all other free persons.

6. The number of slaves.3

As the nation grew, though, so did the census. Over the next 220 years, it grew from its initial $44,000 budget (about $600,000 in today’s dollars) to the nation’s largest peacetime mobilization of government workers, costing $13.1 billion.4 The basic questions dealing with free white males older than 16 became a dizzying array of possibilities, culminating in the ability to determine how many non-Hispanic male children of as many as six races lived in one of roughly 10 million blocks scattered throughout the nation. The census grew invaluable to businesses, as well. In 1810, the census asked its first economic question, breaking down manufactured products in 220 types spread across 25 categories. Nearly two centuries later, economic questions predominated, collecting data ranging from the median household income to the number of waiters and waitresses in any one of thousands of small American towns.

Who Relies on the Census?

Social policy researchers also awoke to the possibilities presented by the census, basing thousands of studies on the data to measure the effectiveness of government programs and to gauge changes sweeping the nation over long periods of time. Government itself became one of the biggest consumers of census-related data. The census was still used by state lawmakers, judges, and commissions to draw congressional and state legislative district boundaries, but it also became useful in directing federal and state spending in fields ranging from school locations to housing for the poor.

The federal government currently bases more than $400 billion in spending on census data,5 and elected officials consider those funds crucial. In 2010, for example, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sounded every bit as disappointed as Jefferson (if somewhat less eloquent) after learning that the Census Bureau’s estimates were more than 200,000 people short of previous estimates. From a congressional standpoint, the news was bad enough. It meant the state would lose two House seats instead of one. From a financial standpoint, it was worse—the city stood to lose millions in federal aid during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. “As they say in Brooklyn,” Bloomberg declared, “Fuhgeddaboudit!”6

Government spending is also critical for businesses. The federal government spends about $700 billion in direct business contracts annually, buying everything from pencils and pens to nuclear submarines and space station parts. The government’s census decisions affect businesses that aren’t even doing business directly with Washington. For example, the Small Business Administration sponsors a program to obtain low-cost loans for historically disadvantaged businesses, such as those owned by women or minorities. Companies can take advantage of those loans if they’re located in HUB (Historically Underutilized Business) Zones, which are defined by census tracts, small geographic units defined by the Census Bureau that are approximately the size of a neighborhood, usually containing 3,000 to 5,000 people. In 2010, the SBA decided to redefine those areas based on the new census tract boundaries. Thousands of small firms were abruptly located outside of the HUBZones, and many feared they wouldn’t be able to survive if they had to pay higher interest rates on loans.7

Business wasn’t the first priority of the first few censuses, though. Establishing a functioning government and determining the number of able-bodied men took precedence. In 1800, the population was broken out into five age groups, with the top end consisting of people over 45 years old—the elderly, then, because life expectancy in America was roughly 40 years.8

The Civil War was still a generation away, but the 1820 census shows an increasing interest in the subjects of race and economics, as well as the first standardized census form used by enumerators who collected information. Besides the expanded age categories for free whites, the 1820 census also collected information on the ages of slaves, and the number of people—slaves included—engaged in commerce, manufacturing, or agriculture. The 1820 census also marked the introduction of another controversial segment of American life, asking for the number of foreign residents.

The expansion of economic questions hadn’t run smoothly. The Treasury Department, citing “numerous and very considerable imperfections and omissions,” was disappointed with the results, so economic questions weren’t asked again until 1840. By 1850, however, the demands of business and government, as well as the new requirement that a record be created for every individual, had led to a massive growth in the number of questions. The census asked for information on everything from “horses, asses, and mules, milch cows, working oxen, other cattle, sheep, and swine” to the quantities produced of dew-rotted hemp and maple sugar.9 The 1850 census also asked for information about property taxes, average wages for carpenters, number of libraries and churches, and whether or not people in a household were “deaf, dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or convict.”

The 1860 census was the most reliable headcount taken for decades to come. The nation’s population growth was heaviest in the northern, free states. Minnesota grew from 6,000 people to more than 172,000 over the decade. The North’s population grew 41 percent; the South grew only 27 percent. The statistical center of population, shown in Figure 1.1, shifted out of the original 13 colonies for the first time, and also from slave state territory (Virginia) to free (Ohio). The northern growth posed a problem for slave-holding states. And in proof that census conspiracy theories have existed almost as long as the census itself, one southern newspaper editor linked the congressional seats lost in the Deep South to the Underground Railroad, which was responsible for using runaway slaves to bolster the North’s population totals.10

FIGURE 1.1 Center of population, 1790–2010

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/center-of-population.php.

As a result of the Civil War, the 1870 census broke all nonwhite people into the “colored” category, with tallies for blacks, mulattos, Chinese (including Indians), and Native Americans. The 1870 census also marked the introduction of a machine to compile responses, known as the Seaton Device after its inventor Edward Seaton, the chief clerk and later director of the Census Bureau.11 By 1890, the census had gone from four basic inquiries (name of household, race, sex, and age) to 13,161 questions. More detailed racial categories had been added to include white, Japanese, Chinese, Negro, mulatto, quadroon, and octoroon. In bulk, it had grown from a 56-page pamphlet to a 25-volume tome with 21,410 pages, and in price, from $44,000 to $11.5 million, or $275 million in current dollars, as Figure 1.2 displays.12

FIGURE 1.2 Number of inquiries or details relating to each subject, 1790–1890

Source: Wright & Hunt, “History of the U.S. Census,” 87, http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/HisGrow1790-1890/HisGrow03.pdf.

Having spent the better part of three centuries exterminating Native Americans, the federal government decided to begin counting them in 1900. Because it had taken so long to count the results of the 1880 and 1890 censuses, the government dramatically cut back on the number of questions. The new Native questions asked for tribal affiliation, any polygamous relationships, fraction of white ancestry, and whether or not they lived in a teepee or other moveable structure. By 1910, that question was changed to “civilized” or “aboriginal” dwelling.

The 1920 census marked a low-water point for the national headcount. It was obvious that population was shifting to northern, urban areas; the census began asking for the native language of peoples’ parents. For the first time in U.S. history, more people lived in urban than rural places.13 Yet farming was still important; so important that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was able to successfully petition for the census to begin in January so farmers would have more accurate memories of the previous year’s harvest. When the results were released, showing a massive shift in population concentration to cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, rural lawmakers from the South worked to avoid reapportionment, partly by claiming a rural undercount and partly by arguing that the reapportionment process was flawed. Congress finally reached agreement in 1929 that the next apportionment would be based on the results of the 1930 census.

As the Great Depression took hold, Congress was frantic for information that would confirm the apparent depth of the crisis. The initial numbers from the 1930 census were widely considered to underestimate the economic damage; a special employment census was ordered by Congress in January 1931.14 The numbers confirmed the seriousness of the situation. A second special census was authorized in 1937. The government used the headcount to compare overall results with the results of a sample of 2 percent of American households in a bid to measure the effectiveness of statistical sampling.

The 1930 census also focused on a pair of emerging consumer-oriented issues, asking people if they had a “radio set,” which had become more common in the previous decade, and telling the enumerators to cite at least one person in a family household as homemaker. Census Bureau Director Robert L. Austin warned his staff that it might be easier to communicate with each other and to travel, but an enumerator “is quite likely to find, when he gets there that the occupants are out. If it is the time of day when the breadwinners are not at their regular places of work and the housewife, if there is anyone who qualifies as such, is not shopping, and the children, if there are any, are not at school, then they are motoring or have gone to the ball game or the ‘movies’ or the amusement park.”15

The current method of reapportionment was created in 1941, when Congress approved legislation that confirmed the number of House seats would remain at 435; before then, the number had been somewhat arbitrarily set by lawmakers. The seats are allocated through the creation of a priority list that measures each state’s claim to each seat based on its population, relative to other states.

The census moved into the computer age after the 1950 headcount, using a UNIVAC computer that weighed 16,000 pounds and required 5,000 vacuum tubes.16 It also counted Americans living abroad for the first time. Most notably, however, the 1950 census marked a milestone that was apparent only more than a half-century later—the peak population of major U.S. cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, St. Louis, Boston, and Washington, D.C. The creation of the interstate highway system and the postwar Baby Boom began driving people into the suburbs, a geography that the Census Bureau still struggles to measure.

Computers took up more of the workload in 1960. Five-subject questionnaires were mailed to every household in the United States, and enumerators picked them up later for verification. After fine-tuning sampling that had begun in the 1940 census, the government selected about a quarter of households that received a longer-form survey with more detailed questions. By 1970, that number was reduced to 20 percent of households, and the Census Bureau used a master address file that allowed Americans to return their census forms by mail for the first time.

The 1980 census was one of the most controversial of the century. It wasn’t any mystery that enumerators missed people. The 1980 headcount missed 1.2 percent of the population, roughly 2.6 million people.17 About 7.7 percent of blacks were thought to have been undercounted in the 1970 census. Detroit officials sued to require the Census Bureau to submit adjusted, statistically sampled numbers to make up for the shortfall. New York City and several other governments joined the court fight, which was decided in favor of the Census Bureau in 1989.18

The census also marked the first appearance of Hispanics on the main population form. The Census Bureau had allowed the use of “Mexican” as a race in 1930 but dropped it. In 1970, the 5 percent sample allowed people to describe themselves as Hispanic or non-Hispanic. The 1980 census showed there were 14.6 million Hispanics in the United States, or 6.4 percent of the total population. Under the census rules, “Hispanic” was treated as an ethnicity; races remained limited to white, black, Native American, Asian/Pacific Islander, and other.

The sampling controversy continued into the 1990 census. Having lost its 1980 case, New York filed suit in 1988 to require the Census Bureau to use statistically adjusted data to hedge against an anticipated undercount. The government agreed to use a small-scale sampling effort and submit the adjusted results to an advisory panel, which would recommend whether to use unadjusted or adjusted numbers in reapportionment. The estimated undercount for blacks was 1.8 percent. The Census Bureau’s advisory panel split on the issue of adjusted data. Census Bureau Director Barbara Everitt Bryant came out in favor of the adjusted data; Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher vetoed it. New York re-launched its lawsuit, losing before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.19

The 2000 headcount marked several departures from previous censuses. It was the first that made data publicly available on the Internet, the first where results confirmed explosive growth in the so-called Sunbelt states of the Southwest and West, and the first to count multiracial Americans. Prior to the 2000 census, people who were of mixed race had to choose one or the other. The new approach allowed people to describe their race with as many as six variables. A person could be white, black, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander, or other—or two, three, four, five, or even all six of the above.

Understanding the Current Census

The most recent census was one of the simplest in a century. Because many of the economic and social indicators from the decennial census were compiled and distributed more than two years after the actual census, much of the information became obsolete immediately. The Census Bureau addressed the problem by launching an annual poll of roughly 3 million households known as the American Community Survey, replacing the decennial long form that had been mailed to 1 of 6 U.S. households in 2000 and creating the basis for Part Two of this guide. The actual census form consisted of 10 basic questions, asking name, sex, race, ethnicity, and relationship and housing status. Even so, it took 565,000 temporary workers added to the government payroll and a budget of $14.7 billion (the Census Bureau returned $1.6 billion after the count) to identify the 308,745,538 people living in the United States on April 1, 2010, and the 10 largest U.S. cities, as shown in Table 1.220

Table 1.2 Ten Largest U.S. cities, 2010 Census

The 2010 census also highlighted increasing diversity in the United States. Far from being a sociological item of interest, diversity is a cornerstone of congressional reapportionment. Citing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the U.S. Supreme Court has generally taken a mixed view of attempts to design race-specific congressional districts. In 1995, the Supreme Court described Georgia’s 11th Congressional District, designed to produce a black lawmaker, as a “geographical monstrosity.”21 A Texas creation designed to elect a black lawmaker in Dallas, the 30th Congressional District, shown in Figure 1.3, was “bizarre” in shape, the Supreme Court found in 1996, but not necessarily a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

FIGURE 1.3 Texas’ 30th Congressional District

Source: U.S. Supreme Court, Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952, June 13, 1996.

Following Census Results

As a practical matter, the first set of census data to be released is the simplest. The first set consists simply of state-by-state population totals that are used to determine the number of House seats and corresponding Electoral College votes that determine the winner of a presidential election. A second set of data, known as the PL94-171 series, is usually released a few states at a time over a two-month period, ending on March 31. The PL94-171 data contain the material that allows reapportionment to occur: It includes population totals by race, ethnicity, and voting age down to very fine levels consisting of areas that can be 500 people or less. A third set of data, known as the Summary File 1 data, includes information about specific ancestry and racial groups, ages, gender, households, relationships, and housing.