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“Young adults ages 20 to 24 are more likely to be neither working nor enrolled in school than their counterparts two decades ago. […] The numbers are worrying because people in their early twenties are at a critical juncture in their lives. The questions they’re tackling—What should I do for a living? Should I get a degree in this or that? How can I land a good first job?—will shape the rest of their lives.…
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…
“Today’s kindergartners offer a glimpse of tomorrow’s demographics.” – Jens Manuel Krogstad, “A view of the future through kindergarten demographics” from Pew Research Center A recent data analysis from Pew Research Center identified 17 states where 20% or more of public kindergartners were Hispanic in 2012. North Carolina just missed Pew’s cut-off; in 2012, 19.4% of kindergartners attending public school were Hispanic or Latino according to the American Community Survey. North Carolina’s share of Hispanic…
More than one-third of American households (35%) were cost burdened in 2012, meaning that they spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing, according to a recent study by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The 2012 American Community Survey shows that North Carolina is slightly below the national average: 1.2 million or 32% of the state’s households were cost burdened. Of these, 570,000 households (15% of all NC households) faced severe…
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…
Deaths from unintentional injury, or accidents, were the fifth leading cause of death in the United States—and North Carolina—in 2010. Accidents, such as car crashes, poisoning, and drowning, are the primary cause of death for children and young adults. More than 4,100 North Carolina residents died from unintentional injuries in 2010: 33% died from motor vehicle accidents (1,383) 23% died from accidental poisoning (965) 21% died from accidental falls (858) Together, these three causes accounted…
Researchers at UNC’s Center for Urban and Regional Studies identified 162 economically distressed tracts in North Carolina based on the 2007-2011 American Community Survey. Each distressed tract met three criteria: Unemployment rate greater than or equal to 14.5% Annual per capita income less than or equal to $16,921 Poverty rate greater than or equal to 24% Statewide, these 162 tracts represent 7.4% of North Carolina’s 2,195 census tracts. An additional 477 census tracts were not…
“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…
The overall mortality rate in the United States declined markedly over the 20th century, resulting in large gains in life expectancy. In 1900, the average U.S. newborn could expect to live to 47.3 years of age. In 2010, they could expect more than 30 additional years of life, with a life expectancy at birth of 78.7. In 1900, the top 3 causes of death were infectious diseases—pneumonia and flu, tuberculosis, and gastrointestinal infections (a fourth…
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…
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