Posts written by Rebecca Tippett
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865,000 North Carolinians—nearly 9% of the total population—identified themselves as “Irish” on ancestry questions in the 2012 American Community Survey (ACS). (An additional quarter million identified themselves as Scotch-Irish, but this ethnic origin is considered distinct from Irish.) Among individuals specifying an ancestry or ethnic origin, Irish is the 5th most common in North Carolina after African-American, American, German, and English. The map below shows concentrations of individuals of Irish ancestry across the state by…
More than 200,000 North Carolina grandparents live with their grandchildren, representing 3.6% of the population 30 and older, according to 2008-2012 American Community Survey data. Half of these grandparents are responsible for the care of their grandchildren, meaning that they are providing for most of their basic needs. Most of these grandparents have been responsible for the care of their grandchildren for years: 40% have been providing for their grandchildren for 5 or more years,…
Duke v. UNC is consistently ranked the best rivalry in college basketball, and one of the greatest rivalries of all American sports: The teams are consistently among the best in their sport. The campuses are all of eight miles apart. The games are among the most hyped of each college basketball season and they rarely disappoint, and frequently determine the ACC champion. Beyond head-to-head competition, the rivalry is close on nearly every metric: fan base…
Forests are vital to the environmental and economic health of North Carolina. Sixty percent of North Carolina’s land area is forested, representing a total of 18.6 million forest acres. Our state’s four national forests—Croatan, Uwaharrie, Nantahala, and Pisgah—offer visitors and residents alike the opportunity to see an array of wildlife and pursue a variety of outdoor activities. In addition to recreational activities, forests improve overall quality of life through clean air and water and are…
Due to decade-to-decade changes in municipal boundaries and Census tabulation boundaries, examining housing change over time at the sub-county level can be very difficult. To overcome these challenges, Carolina Demography used 2010 Census and 2006-2011 American Community Survey data to calculate historic estimates of housing units in North Carolina for each decade back to 1940 for all 6,155 Census block groups and 2,195 Census tracts in the state. These data allow us to examine, in…
I’ve heard someone joke that, prior to 1980, there were two languages spoken in North Carolina: English and bad English. This probably runs fairly true to most people’s day-to-day experiences before the more recent wave of immigration. In 1980, just over 2% of North Carolina residents age 5 and older, or 130,640 individuals, spoke a language other than English at home. Today, nearly 11% speak a language other than English at home, representing nearly a…
Half of North Carolina adults age 16 and older are currently married according to the 2012 American Community Survey. Another 5% are unmarried but living with a romantic partner; 366,000 are cohabiting with an opposite-sex partner, 37,200 with a same-sex partner. Figure 1 shows marital status by age group. In the youngest group, ages 16 to 24, the vast majority (87%) are single/never married. The proportion of younger individuals who have never been married has…
In both this blog and recent presentations, I’ve talked a lot about migration, as net migration into North Carolina is a major factor in state total population growth. But this is only one aspect of movement and migration. Each year, many more people move within the state than move into it. In the 2012 American Community Survey, nearly 1.5 million North Carolina residents reported moving in the past year. Of these movers, the vast majority…
For more than twenty years, migration has fueled North Carolina’s growth. People move from other states and countries to go to school, to work, and to retire throughout the state. Between 1990 and 2010, North Carolina gained more than 2 million new residents due to migration. New Census Bureau estimates for July 1, 2013 total population show that migration continues to drive North Carolina’s population growth: 175,000 people moved into the state since 2010, accounting…
Between 2011 and 2012, North Carolina gained nearly 35,000 net migrants. The total flows into and out of the state were nearly 8 times as large: nearly 240,000 residents moved out while another 275,000 moved in. Net migration is the total number of movers into an area minus the total number of movers out of an area. Net in-migration means more people are moving in than are moving out, while net out-migration means more people…
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