Feb 12, 2006

Getting to Know You, Sorta

My pal at Dark Days Ahead just tagged me with an interesting little exercise that he created, based on a simple Census exercise. While I'm all for sharing more about where you're at, I wonder who I'm going to tag, given that most of my readers are on the moon, or at least, out of the U.S.

Anyway, so here goes. In the census tract where I live:

There were a total of 2,240 people in the year 2000. It is 73% African American, 16+% white, and ~10% OTHER. 85% of the people over 25 are high school graduates or greater. 25% claim some kind of disability. The median family income is $75,000+ (compared to a National median of $50,000), while the median per capita income is approximately $27,000 (about $5,500 higher than the National median). The mean travel time to work is 33 minutes. There are only 94 people living beneath the poverty line. Fourteen percent are civilian veterans. Forty-six percent were born in a different state. The median mortgage in the area (there is a 65%+ home-ownership rate) was $1,205 in 2000.

I'm looking to move soon, and thought it would be interesting to compare the data from that area to this one, so here it is for that census tract:

There were a total of 3,630 people in the year 2000. It is 24% African American, 66% white, and ~9% Latino. ~89% of the people over 25 are high school graduates or greater. 15% claim some kind of disability. The median family income is $71,000+ (compared to a National median of $50,000), while the median per capita income is approximately $31,000 (about $9,000 higher than the National median). The mean travel time to work is 33.5 minutes. There are 364 people living beneath the poverty line. Seven and a half percent are civilian veterans. Sixty percent were born in a different state. The median mortgage in the area (there is only a 42% home-ownership rate) was $1,671 in 2000.

Fascinating. I definitely learned some things. Like, no wonder I can't find a decent Asian market nearby. And also, that you can't make assumptions on socio-economic status characteristics just based on race (duh). Okay, so who are my victims? I tag flygirl and burnedouteyes.

Just do this:

1) Go to American FactFinder on the Census Bureau website.
2) Type in your zip code to get a fact sheet on it.
3) Identify at least 5 interesting facts about your zip code.
4) If you don't live in the U.S., then use whatever comparable data you can find. And if there isn't any, just describe your neighborhood to us to give us a sense.

Thanks DDA.

4 comments:

flygirl said...

thanks Rage! fascinating stuff. I wish it was as easy for us (insert postcode) to read census data here. it's packaging it pretty ordinary!

Rage said...

No worries. You could just make something up about your 'hood. Or give us something qualitative instead of quant-heavy.

Anonymous said...

I didn't list it, but I was surprised by the number of people listed as disabled in my zip. It's kind of odd. How do they ask that question, d'you know?

Rage said...

Questions 16 and 17 on the Census 2000 long form. interesting stuff, though.