The U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday released its latest round of information from the 2020 Census. The data shows changes to the demographic makeup of the country over the past decade, which states will now use to decide congressional redistricting procedures. The results are a snapshot of everyone living in the U.S. on April 1, 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the Census Bureau’s ability to collect and process data, which could potentially have led to an under count in the data. Activists also point to former President Donald Trump’s attempt to include a citizenship question in the Census as a potential driver of decreased response rates from communities of color.
Here’s what to know about the latest Census data release.
What’s in the data?
The data provide population counts and ethnicity, race and voting age across the country, down to the local level.
They also show how many people live in each county, tract, city and block. Tracts are comparable to neighborhoods, but geographic boundaries may have changed since the 2010 Census.
The data has the first 2020 Census national and local statistics on voting age population, race, Hispanic origin, home occupation or vacancy and how many people are living in group quarters, such as military barracks, university dorms or jails or prisons.
The data don’t include gender or age breakdowns; that information will be released in the future. Individuals will be counted as either age 18 or under.
What did we learn from the release?
The United States population is “much more multiracial and more racially and ethnically diverse than what we measured in the past,” said Nicholas Jones, the director of race, ethnicity, research and outreach for the Census Bureau’s Population Division, at a census press conference.
“Although the white alone population decreased by 8.6% since 2010, the white in combination population saw a 316% change during the same period,” he added.
Nevertheless, Jones noted that the white population remains the largest group in the United States
Overall, the data show a complex country, capturing both the diversity that was already present as well as changes in the past ten years.
What’s changed since the 2010 census?
The disruption of the coronavirus pandemic could mean thousands of Black and Hispanic Americans were under counted in the Census. Spring quarantine made it more difficult to deliver questionnaires to hard-to-reach populations.
A USA TODAY analysis last year found that in 63% of tracts, fewer people provided initial responses than during the 2010 census. The response rates fell especially for areas with high concentrations of Black or Latino populations and low-income communities.
The analysis also found overwhelmingly white population tracts trailed their 2010 response rates by 2%. In tracts that had a high percentage of Black residents, the share of households answering the census dropped 11%, and for high Latino populations tracts, the drop was 15%.
Data journalists at USA TODAY will report on how populations have shifted from 2010 to the 2020 data. However, because tract boundaries have changed in some cases, USA TODAY estimated 2020 tract population counts based on their new boundaries for consistency.
What does this mean for congressional districts?
The bureau was able to deliver the Constitutionally required apportionment results to President Joe Biden in April.
Texas gained two seats in the House of Representatives. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon all gained one House seat. California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia all lost one House seat.
The shift could affect the 2022 midterm elections and whether Democrats can hold onto control of the House, where they hold a narrow majority.
Are most counties growing or shrinking?
The U.S. population grew by 22.7 million from 2010, to 331.4 million. But that was a slower rate of increase than in previous decades.
“Since the 1950s, percentage increases have generally been declining each decade,” said Marc Perry, a senior demographer in the bureau’s population division. This past decade’s 7.4% increase… was, in fact, the second lowest percent increase ever. Only the 1930s had slower growth.”
U.S. population growth particularly came in cities, he said. “The 10 largest cities all grew this past decade, and 8 of the 10 grew at a faster rate this decade compared to the last.”
Cincinnati, for example, officially ended 70 years of population loss with the latest data. Phoenix was the fastest growing city in the nation and officially surpassed Philadelphia as the fifth-largest city.
Nevertheless, Perry said, “population decline was widespread this decade—most counties lost population between 2010 and 2020.”
How USA TODAY is tracking diversity
USA TODAY compiles a diversity index that shows on a scale from 0 to 100 how likely it is that two people in an area would be of a different race or ethnicity. A score of 0 would mean everyone had the same race and ethnicity; a score of 100 would mean everyone in an area had a distinctly different combination of race and ethnicity.
Most places will fall some place in the middle.
The index was invented in 1991 by Phil Meyer of the University of North Carolina and Shawn McIntosh, who was then with USA TODAY.
This score is not the same as the Census Bureau’s version of the diversity index because of differences in how the bureau’s formula counts race and Hispanic origin.
How the Census is protecting privacy
By law the bureau is prohibited from releasing information that would identify people. The August redistricting data will be the first to implement new privacy safeguards.
The bureau’s acting director Ron Jarmin wrote in a blog post, “we’ve carefully calibrated how much protection or noise to add so that the results strike a balance between data protection and precision.”
As a result, “some small areas like census blocks may look ‘fuzzy,’ meaning that the data for a particular block may not seem correct,” Jarmin wrote, and encouraged users to group blocks together for more precision.
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