NC in Focus
Keep up with our latest demographic insights
The Center for Women’s Health Research (CWHR) at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine released the 12th edition of our North Carolina Women’s Health Report Card on May 9, 2022. This document is a progress report on the health and health care needs of North Carolina’s 5+ million women. Carolina Demography collected the data found within this report. A complete list of data indicators and highlights from the report is available from CWHR.…
With UNC and Duke playing each other in the Final Four this weekend, all eyes will be on central North Carolina. 🏀 As local demographers based at UNC (#GoHeels), we have a professional obligation to present some demographic facts about both Orange County, NC and Durham County, NC. Percentage of first-time undergraduate students at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (entering in fall) from... Orange County: 8.3 Durham County: 3.8 Source: myinsight.northcarolina.edu Population 2010:…
Climate change affects us all, but that impact is not spread evenly across populations. In North Carolina, we are seeing changes ranging from coast line erosion and increased frequency of powerful storms to floods, drought, and increased temperatures. Rural communities are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Small rural towns are often less resilient – meaning they don’t have the ability to withstand or recover quickly from natural disasters– than their larger, more urban…
Dr. Michael Cline is the state demographer for North Carolina at the Office of State Budget and Management and has given us permission to re-post his content here. Each year, he publishes population estimates and projections for North Carolina and its counties. How many people live here? What are the characteristics of our population? These are the questions people use demographic data to answer. However, there are different types of demographic data available to answer…
The 2021 county population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau are the first set of population estimates based on the 2020 Census. Here’s what the new data tells us about how North Carolina counties have changed in the year following the Census. 73 NC counties have grown since 2020 North Carolina grew by 112,000 people or 1.1% between April 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021, faster than the national rate of 0.1%. According to the…
Nationally, and in North Carolina, there was evidence of a Covid-19 “baby bust”, meaning the number of births decreased after the pandemic started in March 2020. We reached out to the State Center for Health Statistics (SCHS) for updated data. What does this new data tell us? We did see a decrease but it was smaller than expected First, the Covid-19 baby bust was real, but not as large as we initially reported. Last year,…
The Criminal Justice Innovation Lab (“Lab”) at UNC’s School of Government recently released a Measuring Justice Dashboard. The dashboard visualizes millions of North Carolina criminal justice records to help stakeholders understand state and local systems, see where they are doing well, and spot areas that may need attention. We spoke with Jessica Smith, Lab Director and W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Public Law and Government, about the dashboard and how it was built. Why…
Ed note: Though we cover a range of demographic topics, we hold a special spot in our hearts for our annual report on NC's state vegetable, the humble sweet potato. Previous coverage:2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2015, 2014. Happy Thanksgiving! The year of 2020 has been an especially challenging year for the fresh vegetable industry due to the the historic wildfires over the West Coast; the August storms in the Northern Midwest, and Hurricane Laura’s affect…
Picture this: You’re at a demography dinner party. (Let’s pretend we can have dinner parties again.) And the demography enthusiast next to you says, “Hey! Got a question for you. Which county in North Carolina is most like the state?” How would you answer? First, you’d want to know what parameters to include – e.g. what factors to consider in thinking through how to calculate your answer. To do that, we can start with an…
28 million kids are now eligible to receive their Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines now that the shots are approved for 5 to 11-year-olds, according to the AP. We wanted to see how many kids in NC fall in this age group and determine where they live. Using the 2021 single age population projection data from the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management (OSBM), we calculated the number of individuals aged 5 through 11 by county…
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