Massive amounts of new census data were released just after midnight on August 15th, which show among other things:
1) New Yorkers have become much better educated since 2000.
2) Though immigrants continue to stream into the city, the number of foreign born residing in the city only increased by about 160,000 in the five years through 2005, well below the increases of the 1990s.
3) The number of blacks has declined in the city.
4) The number of whites has increased in Manhattan and now Brooklyn.
The midnight data dump was the first release from the United States Census Bureau's new American Community Survey. Three more releases from the 2005 survey are planned, including one on economic status (August 29th), one on housing, and one on detailed characteristics by race and Hispanic status. In the future, the data will be constantly updated.
Some of the questions that the American Community Survey will ultimately answer include:
1) Has Manhattan become even more unequal? After the 2000 Census the richest 20 percent in Manhattan had incomes 50 times those in the lowest 20 percent. Could this have increased?
2) What changes are discernable in the various community planning districts?
3) If the net number of foreign born residents is increasing more slowly than it was in the 1990s, while the number of Mexicans is soaring, which groups are showing a decline?
4) Has the trend toward a more highly educated population in the city and especially Manhattan affected the housing opportunities of affluent and non-affluent New Yorkers?
5) How are the various immigrant groups faring in the post 9/11 world?
The advent of the American Community Survey represents a sharp departure from the way the census bureau collected data on so-called social and economic characteristics in earlier decades.
It is important to realize that the census bureau’s clients are the United States Congress and the governments of the 50 states. The United States Constitution requires that there be a census every ten years in order to carve the United States into an appropriate number of Congressional Districts, each representing the same number of residents. This redistricting and reapportionment also occurs on a state and local level, for legislative, judicial and other districts.
To accomplish the redistricting, the Census Bureau need only collect a handful of variables – the location of each person, age, sex, race, Hispanic status, whether one owns or rents a house or apartment or lives in a group quarters (such as a college dorm, prison, or chronic care hospital).
Along with these so-called "short form" data, a sample of respondents in the past was asked many more questions about income, occupation, veteran status, citizenship, education, disability status, ancestry and ethnicity, migration, journey to work, and so forth. About one-sixth of the households in the United States, or about 18 million, received this "long form."
The American Community Survey is the replacement for the long form. It is a rolling survey with a set number of interviews each month totaling about 3 million per year. One of the largest advantages of this survey is that those doing follow-up will be professional interviewers, and methods have been established to count hard-to-reach groups effectively. Five years of testing ensures quality control. As more and more data become available; in all, the census bureau will publish about 15 million records. Information on tracts and block groups, the small areas that were released for the "long form" will be available in 2010.
The just-released 2005 American Community Sruvey includes some data for places and counties with population 65,000 or larger, including most of New York City's community planning districts, which are released as areas called Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs). PUMAs are required to contain at least 100,000 people, and there are about 2,100 across the country. New York chose to make them largely coincident with the community planning districts. However, since the sample is not quite three percent, one can expect that only about 2,500 people will be interviewed in each PUMA or planning district. This means that for very detailed variable categories, such as the 123 individual foreign birthplaces that are counted, most PUMAs may have a very small number of a given population type. When this occurs, the census bureau suppresses the data since no accurate estimate of such groups are possible.
So far the American Community Survey has provided a surprising new look at NYC. Though immigration is continuing, immigrants along with non-immigrants seem to be leaving the city. The increasing affluence of Manhattan seems to be spilling over into Brooklyn. These and other trends mean that the remaining data releases are of great interest. We will know now how New York City is evolving, we will not have to guess or wait until the results of the new census in 2012.
Andrew A. Beveridge has taught sociology at Queens College since 1981, done demographic analyses for the New York Times since 1993, and been in charge of Gotham Gazette's demographics topic page since 2000. The opinions expressed are his alone.
New York State Assembly- District 22: The Candidates • Ellen Young, former district administrator (D). Other Races • New York State Assembly- District 57: Succeeding Green in Fort Greene – and Beyond • New York State Senate-District 13: Bringing the Money Back from Albany |
When Jimmy Meng became the state assembly's first Chinese American member in 2004, many people credited ethnic appeal in an increasingly Asian district. Meng, suffering from chronic back pain, has decided against running for re-election. The ethnic politics of the Queens district will likely come into play again as three candidates vie for his seat.
Three candidates are running for the Democratic primary. Ellen Young, worked for Councilmember John Liu before stepping down to campaign. Julia Harrison, who held Liu's seat in the council before stepping down due to term limits. Terence Park, a district leader, and member of Community Board Seven, was removed from the ballot for a technicality but successfully appealed, reversing the decision. Young is Chinese, Harrison is white, and Park is Korean.
Meng's daughter, Grace Meng, also attempted to run for the seat, but was removed from the ballot after it was determined she did not live in the district. Young has raised about $250,000, and Terence Park has raised $219,000, while Harrison has raised $32,000. The primary winner will face Republican candidate Christopher Migliaccio in November.
Young and Harrison insist that race is not an issue in the campaign. But some frame the election as a contest between the old, mainly white Flushing represented by Harrison, and the changing, more racially diverse community represented by the Asian candidates. Fifty-one percent of the district's residents are Asian.
"It is very obvious and very honest to say that race is a factor … but real voters care for what your record is about," said Park.
Young is considered an immigrant advocate, and has served as the president of the Chinese American Voters Association, and has organized programs to help immigrants fill out Census forms. Harrison and Park, meanwhile, say immigration issues should be left to the federal government. Harrison has questioned the very practice of categorizing people as immigrants, and says that as long as they are citizens she would represent them like any other constituent.
Harrison's comments about immigrants have led to trouble in the past. In 1996 she was criticized for making derogatory comments about Asian Americans when she was quoted saying they "were more like colonizers than immigrants. The money came first. The paupers followed, smuggled in and bilked by their own kind." She maintains that her words were misconstrued.
Harrison has said the Democratic Club of Flushing, Whitestone and College Point asked her to run because it felt that the other Democratic candidates were running on personal and racial appeal, but lacked legitimate experience. Young maintains that her two-decade record of public service is more than adequate experience.
Candidates have largely focused on relatively uncontroversial issues, such as an increased police force, more funding for schools, and better transportation. The candidates did, however, have different plans for how to best achieve common goals such as safer streets. Young, Park, and Harrison mentioned increased police presence to fight crime, while Migliaccio focused on stronger penalties to deter crime.
Park focuses on overdevelopment, saying that plans for downtown Flushing could bring "chaos to our community" if better planning for parking is not taken into consideration. He also worries that the character of the neighborhood is threatened by increasingly dense residential construction projects.
"There are too many developers invading our neighborhoods and knocking down houses to build multiple dwelling houses," he said.
In regard to education, the candidates agreed upon the need for increased funding for public schools and increased hours for after school programs. Migliaccio, however, differed from the Democratic candidates in emphasizing the need to give students the means to obtain education out of district, instead of limiting educational funds to improvements within the district.
Transportation was also a frequently mentioned issue. Migliaccio and Harrison emphasized the importance of extending the 7 subway line to reach farther into Queens. This would better connect various neighborhoods of Queens to one another, as well as giving residents of the farther bounds of the district better access to Manhattan.
One area of contention, however, has been that of health care. While Young and Harrison spoke of improving Medicare and Medicaid, Migliaccio disagreed. “I don’t think the state should be the primary provider,” he said. “That’s not our job.”
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Taking the Public Pulse |
San Jose is the third largest city in California, larger than San Francisco, larger than Oakland. We have a $2.7 billion combined budget, about 6,700 employees, 27 departments and offices, 10 council members elected by district and a mayor elected at large.
We deliver services. We are not just a group of people who get together to drink coffee or stand around a hole in the street and take home nice salaries and good benefits.
The customers only see the results of what we do. They may see us standing around the hole, but then they have to drive across the field once the hole is filled in. That’s what most people see: how the hole is filled in, if the street is smooth or not.
Surveys are very different from normal ways that we receive information, policy desires and even service requests.
In the survey, many of the people who give us information are not registered voters or likely voters. They are probably not the people who show up at meetings. They are not the people who get together in a neighborhood association. Some of them are probably not even citizens. We actually don’t call it a citizen survey; we call it a community survey because almost half of the respondents in some of our neighborhoods are probably not citizens.
We do the survey every two years on the telephone in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. A hundred questions. That selects out certain people right there; you have to have 20 minutes to spend.
It covers issues. What’s the major issue for San Jose? What’s the condition of your neighborhood, what’s the condition of the streets?
Half of these questions relate directly to performance measures. Others are, “What do you see as the major issue? What would you like done?” That sort of thing. We ask if people volunteer and a bit about demographics. And finally we do a couple of research questions.
Our report is done by a survey consultant, who is a pollster. It is under the direction of the city manager. We feel, of course, that it is balanced, fair and honest.
The survey got us the first positive headline in a while on the front page of the Mercury News. It said that San Jose “was a good place to live.” Seventy-nine percent of the people thought the quality of life was good, up four percent since 2000. Seventy-six percent were satisfied with services. Eighty percent were happy with our employees.
A couple of survey questions that were new this year were surprises. We asked people “How do you want to get services or find information that’s not emergency in nature?” People want to call a person. They don’t want to go to a Web site, they don’t want to go to a call center. That surprised me because I think the 311 system is a great gateway and having a good Internet page will be a gateway of the future. But it’s clear that, even in the capital of Silicone Valley, we are not quite there.
We have learned some lessons. There are multiple voices in government. You don’t have just one customer who pays. You have customers who don’t even use the service, but who care as well.
Brooke Myhre is with the budget office of the City of San Jose, California.
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