Carolina Demographics
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Interested in doing N.C. version of http://t.co/06rRzuK3u3 ? I bet @ncdemography could help. #ddj @TheNCPress @UNCJschool — Ryan Thornburg (@rtburg) September 5, 2014 Because I can hardly resist an opportunity to a) try to replicate data and b) help someone who's looking for data, I went poking around for this data this afternoon. The police department statistics are straightforward. The most recent data is from a 2007 survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.…
In 1910, North Carolina had a population of 2.2 million. Only two cities, Charlotte (34,014) and Wilmington (25,748), had populations surpassing 25,000 persons. Winston-Salem (22,700) was the third largest city in the state followed by Raleigh (19,218), Asheville (18,762), Durham (18,241), and Greensboro (15,895). None of North Carolina’s cities numbered among the 100 largest cities in the United States. Reflecting this highly rural, low density population, less than 3% of the state’s population lived in…
This Saturday, July 26th, marks the 24th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA. The ADA was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals with disabilities. The ADA also mandates accessibility of state and local government services, public accommodations and commercial facilities, transportation, and telecommunications. The purpose of the ADA was to more fully integrate Americans with disabilities into society. In North Carolina,…
Few counties today have their original configurations. As the non-Indian population grew and spread across the continent, territories and states created new counties and changed those already in existence. The average number of changes in size, shape, or location per American county is between four and five; some counties were changed more than two dozen times. Most boundary changes were alterations of the lines between existing counties, not the results of creating new counties from…
Between 2012 and 2013, North Carolina gained nearly 100,000 new residents according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s population estimates. On Thursday, the Census Bureau released county-level population estimates for July 1, 2013, by age, sex, race, and ethnicity, enabling us to examine population change in even greater detail. Looking specifically at race and ethnicity, nearly one-third (32.7 percent) of the state’s population growth since 2012 was from growth in the non-Hispanic white population, which grew…
“English-speaking ability is an important topic surrounding immigration in the United States. For the foreign born, fluency in English is associated with greater earnings and occupational mobility. Conversely, the presence of many people with limited English ability requires state and local governments to make costly adjustments, such as providing English as a Second Language classes in schools and translating official forms into multiple languages.” - Christine Gambino, Yesenia Acosta, and Elizabeth Grieco, “English-Speaking Ability of…
While Catholicism and non-denominational churches are gaining adherents within the state, 2010 county patterns of religious affiliation reflect significant stability in North Carolina’s religious landscape. These maps of religious affiliation by county, measured as the denomination with the largest number of adherents according to the United States Census of Religious Bodies for 1916, 1926, and 1936, highlight this stability. As in 2010, Southern Baptist is the largest denominational affiliation statewide, United Methodist has a strong…
According to the most recent U.S. Religion Census, conducted in 2010, about half of the U.S. population (49% or nearly 151 million persons) are adherents to some religion. Nationwide, the largest denominational affiliation is Catholicism, with an estimated 59 million adherents. While Protestantism as a group has more than 77 million adherents, it is comprised of dozens of individual denominations. Among these, the Southern Baptist Convention is the second largest religious group in the United…
Between 2000 and 2010, North Carolina’s child population (ages 0 to 17) increased by almost 318,000 individuals. Unlike growth in the 65 and older population—which grew by more than 265,000 individuals and increased almost everywhere statewide—growth in the child population was uneven across the state. The child population shrank in 30 rural counties. The largest losses were in the eastern counties of Halifax (-2,387), Edgecombe (-1,188), and Martin (-1,098) and the western counties of Cleveland…
In a previous post, I looked at changes in the number and type of non-English languages spoken at home in North Carolina over time. Today, I’m looking at variation in languages spoken across space; that is, how do languages spoken vary across North Carolina counties? At an initial glance, there is little county-to-county variation. The majority of individuals age 5 and over in each county speak only English at home. Of those that speak another…
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