Demographics

Data on incomes of households for US counties allow us to see the geographic patterns of poorer, average and richer households. Covering the numbers of households and shares of households that are relatively poor to rich, we get a fascinating picture of American economic diversity.   read more »

The fortunes of the city of Chicago have become clouded in recent years as concerns over its weakening finances and heavy debt obligations have grown. The tally for the unfunded public employee debt obligations of Chicago’s overlapping units of local governments (including those for public schools, parks, and county services) is now approaching $30 billion. Moreover, the city government has been criticized for its practices of funding current public services with proceeds from the issuance of long-term debt and the long-term leases of public assets (such as its parking meter system).  read more »

There is nothing like a trip to Washington, D.C., to show how out of touch America’s ruling classes have become. I was in the nation’s capital to appear on a panel for a Politico event that – well after I agreed to come – was titled “Booming Cities, Busting Suburbs.”

The notion of cities rising from the rotting carcass of suburbia is widely accepted today by much of our corporate, academic and media leadership. This notion has been repeatedly embraced as well by the Obama administration, whose own former secretary of Housing and Urban Development declared several years back that the suburbs were dying, and people were “moving back to the central cities.”  read more »

The new Census Bureau state and District of Columbia population estimates indicate that North Dakota grew at the fastest rate from the 2010 census, displacing the District of Columbia, which had grown the fastest from 2010 to 2013. Seven of the 10 fastest growing areas were in the South and West between 2010 and 2014. Only one state, West Virginia, suffered a population loss between 2010 and 2014 (-0.1 percent).  read more »

We’ve come to the end of another year at New Geography. Here’s a look back at the most popular pieces from 2013. Happy New Year, and thanks for reading.

12. The Rust Belt Roars Back from the Dead In December, Joel and Richey Piiparinen laid out the case for the rustbelt resurgence based on human capital and a new maker economy. This piece also appeared at The Daily Beast.
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In this information age, brains are supposed to be the most valued economic currency. For California, where the regulatory environment is more difficult for companies and people who make things, this is even more the case. Generally speaking, those areas that have the heaviest concentration of educated people generally do better than those who don’t.  read more »

The urban cores of the nation's 52 major metropolitan areas (over 1 million population) lost nearly one-fifth of their school age population between 2000 and 2010. This is according an analysis of small area age group data for children aged 5 to 14 from Census Bureau data, using the City Sector Model. Over the period, the share of 5 to 14 age residents living in the functional urban cores declined from 15.0 percent to 12.0 percent (Figure 1).  read more »

In the past, this season was marked by a greater interest in divinity, the family hearth and the joy of children. Increasingly our society has been turning away from such simple human pleasures, replacing them with those of technology.

Despite the annual holiday pageantry, in the West religion is on the decline, along with our society’s emphasis on human relationships. Atheism seems to be getting stronger, estimated at around 13 percent worldwide but much higher in such countries as Japan, Germany and China. “The world is going secular,” claims author Nigel Barber. “Nothing short of an ice age can stop it.”  read more »

President Obama’s amnesty edict, likely to be the first of other such measures, all but guarantees California’s increasingly Latino future. But, sadly, for all the celebration among progressives, the media, Democratic politicans and in the Latino political community, there has been precious little consideration about the future of the newly legalized immigrants, as well as future generations of Latinos, in the state.  read more »

60 Minutes ran a segment recently called “Falling Apart” that was another alarmist take on the state of American infrastructure. I’ll embed here but if it doesn’t display for you, click to CBS News to watch (autoplay link).

We’ve seen this story before. America’s infrastructure is falling apart and we need to spend many billions on upgrades, but politicians won’t agree because they are too craven.  read more »