A highly publicized marriage followed by a swift divorce adds Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries to the long list of celebrity splits.  After recovering from the demise of this fairy tale, Social Explorer took the opportunity to look at marriage and divorce trends.

The Census Bureau tracks marital status with even more detail than reality television fans to “monitor eligibility for program services and benefits, and of changes resulting from federal policies and programs.”  According to the American Community Survey, 2,113,521 women got married in 2010 (down from 2,208,971 in 2009).

After just weeks of wedded bliss, Kardashian and Humphries ended their marriage, like the millions of other divorced Americans.  Kardashian and Humphries are part of a trend that has grown even in the past year.  They join the 27,025,729 other divorced Americans–a number rose from 10.6 percent of the over 15 population in 2009 to 10.9 percent in 2010, according to the ACS.

This particular pair also provides truly unique data points because they would appear in both the recent marriage and recent divorce data for the 2011 American Community Survey.  We won’t know for sure how many are keeping up with them until the census bureau adds a Kardashian column on the marital status table.

With the new school year approaching, Social Explorer is taking a closer look at education data today and over the years.  In this installment, we are looking at the rise of high school and college education through the decades.

Some of the earliest detailed census data on education came from 1850 when the census reported information about school attendance.  For many decades, the census focused on literacy rates, which we discussed in part two of the back to school series.

By the mid-1900s, data on educational attainment emerged (elementary school, high school, college, etc.), adding new insight into education levels across the nation and between population groups.  Using the 1940 and 1970 censuses and the 2009 American Community Survey, Social Explorer investigated these changes in detail.

Educational attainment, as measured by earning degrees, increased nearly one and a half times over between 1940 and 2009 at both the high school and college levels.  The trends in the data also show that college degrees today are even more prevalent than high school degrees were in the 1940s.

Comparing genders, women have had consistently higher numbers in attaining high school degrees, while men earn more college degrees.

However, by 2009, the differences in attainment between the two genders became quite small, with men catching up to women in high school degrees and women catching up to men in college degrees.  The following tables examine this growth:

Education levels have been rising across the board, but in recent years, the number of young women attending college has increased markedly.  As of 2009, 9,219,928 women were enrolled in college, which outnumbers the 7,234,021 men enrolled.  This influx of women attending college has propelled the growth in the overall number of adult women with college degrees.

We hope you enjoyed parts one, two and three of our back to school series.  Please visit Social Explorer’s maps and reports sections to learn more about education and other data.

While many parts of upstate New York are experiencing population losses, some areas of the Hudson Valley are growing.  New York Times journalist Peter Applebome writes about the shift and the people behind it in “Williamsburg on the Hudson,” which also includes demographic data from Social Explorer.

Call it the Brooklynization of the Hudson Valley, the steady hipness creep with its locavore cuisine, its Williamsburgian bars, its Gyrotonic exercise, feng shui consultants and deep clay art therapy and, most of all, its recent arrivals from New York City…

The migration north began with the weekender incursions in the ’80s and ’90s, gained a more urgent and permanent tone after 9/11, stumbled during the real estate bust and is now finding its way again. But, for all the images of upstate decay, the population of the Hudson Valley is growing more than twice as fast as that of the rest of the state — 5.8 percent over the past decade, compared with 2.1 percent for New York State and New York City. (While there are no universally accepted boundaries to the Hudson Valley, this reference includes the counties north of suburban Rockland and Westchester and south of the capital region: Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, Ulster, Columbia and Greene.)

Click here for the full story of the area’s history, transformation, newcomers and employment outlook.

Virtual game company Zynga—the creator of popular social games such as CityVille and FarmVille—is planning to enter StockMarketVIlle shortly with an initial public offering of $1 billion, and the company could soon be valued at over $20 billion.  Zynga is perhaps best known for FarmVille—the game where players grow virtual crops and tend to virtual animals.

With the fake farm sector booming, Social Explorer examined data on the real farm industry in the US.  The Census Bureau combines certain occupations, so for this research, Social Explorer looked at the farming, fishing and forestry category, which is mostly made up of farmers and gives a good indication of how that group is performing.  While the overall employed population increased from 97,639,355 to 140,602,470 between 1980 and 2009, the farming/fishing/forestry sector shrunk from 2,811,258 to 988,070 (a decline of 64.9 percent) due to numerous factors, such as large-scale farming and automation.

Data from decennial census and 2009 American Community Survey for “farming, fishing and forestry” occupation category.

Meanwhile, FarmVille, which launched in June 2009, now has almost 38 million monthly active users—nearly six times the number of farms reported in the 1920 census (a high year for the sector) and over 17 times the number of farms in 2007 (according to the US Census of Agriculture).

Perhaps this signifies a shift to America’s agricultural heritage.  Census data from 1820 shows that 83.1 percent of working adults were employed in agriculture (with the rest in commerce and manufacturing).  Today’s Farmville participation rate on Facebook rivals the level of actual agricultural employees reported in the 1840 census (21.3 percent).

When you’re done watering your virtual crops and frolicking with your virtual sheep, check out Social Explorer’s maps and reports for more data adventures.

Today, President Hosni Mubarak stepped down as President of Egypt, handing over control of the government to the military.  Egypt’s people rejoiced at the end of the 30-year long repressive regime.

Celebrations are echoing across the globe, particularly in communities with many Egyptians.  Here in the US, 182,914 people are of Egyptian ancestry, according to the 2005-09 American Community Survey.  (Up from 142,832 in the 2000 Census.)

You might hear the biggest cheers in areas around Washington, DC, and parts of New York City and New Jersey.

Egyptians in Washington, DC Metro (American Community Survey 2005-09)

Egyptians in New York City Metro (American Community Survey 2009-09)

Click around the maps to explore these and other Egyptian American communities.

The New York Times explores interracial marriage trends in Susan Saulny’s article “Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above.”  An array of illustrative graphics feature Social Explorer data on interracial marriage rates across different racial and ethnic groups.

Nearly 9 percent of all marriages in the United States in 2009 were interracial or interethnic, more than double the percentage in 1980. The rates of intermarriage vary widely depending on gender, race or ethnicity. Gender differences are most pronounced among blacks and Asians. Black men marry someone from a different group twice as often as black women do, while among Asians, the gender pattern is reversed. Over all, black Hispanics and American Indians have the highest rates of intermarriage. For Asians and white Hispanics, the rates of intermarriage have remained static or decreased.

Click here to see the trends and read the story.

The latest in the Islamic center controversy has the media focusing on a small church in Gainesville, Florida.  Here, Terry Jones, the outspoken anti-Islam pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, has the spotlight.  Just this week, he cancelled a planned 9/11 Koran burning protest and is now visiting New York City.

This pastor and his 50 parishioners have the world’s attention, but how representative are they?

Beyond ideologies, Social Explorer can provide helpful numbers and context.  The Religious Congregations and Membership Survey, conducted by the Association of Religious Data Archives, tracks the number of religious adherents and congregations, as well as dozens of denominations.

In 2000, Alachua County, Florida (where the Dove World Outreach Center is located) had 217,955 residents and a diversity of religions.  The proportion of the population that is estimated to be religious is lower in Alachua County (43.13%) than in both the rest of Florida (50.79%) and the entire United States (61.49%).

While Catholicism is the largest religion nationwide, Evangelical Protestants make up the most popular religious group in Alachua County.  Terry Jones’ Dove World Outreach Center parishioners represent 0.15% of the total 33,865 Evangelical Protestants in the county.  They are greatly outnumbered numerically and in public opinion by other Evangelicals.

They are also outnumbered by Alachua County Muslims.  According to the 2000 survey, Alachua County was also home to 450 Muslims and one mosque.

For full details on the different religious groups in Alachua County and around the country, visit Social Explorer’s religious survey maps and reports.

In The Wall Street Journal’s “Young Women’s Pay Exceeds Male Peers’,” Conor Dougherty reports the latest findings on 20-something women.

In 2008, single, childless women between ages 22 and 30 were earning more than their male counterparts in most U.S. cities, with incomes that were 8% greater on average, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data released Wednesday by Reach Advisors, a consumer-research firm in Slingerlands, N.Y.

In the article, Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge “I expect the trend to continue.” And he would know–it’s a trend he’s been researching for years.

In 2007, the New York Times covered the topic in “For Young Earners in Big City, a Gap in Women’s Favor,” where an examination of young women (across all marital statuses and with or without children) in big cities revealed that women were now earning more than men in the work world.

Analyzing 2005 Census estimate data, Beveridge wrote about the unique social and economic position of New York City women for GothamGazette.com, finding that:

They are much more likely to be single, earn more money, and have more education than women living in the rest of the United States. And while the same percent of New York women are working as women elsewhere in the country, the jobs they are doing are much different.

A subsequent article about 20 somethings in New York City from the 1970s to the 2000s highlighted the achievement and wage gap between men and women.  Beveridge examined the trends of women beating men in educational attainment, and making gains in salary levels too.

Men have seen their real wages fall substantially and women outside of New York have seen only very modest gain…Over this period, women in New York City saw an amazing jump in their wages compared with those of men in their age group. While women in the city earned, on average about $7,000 less than men in 1970, by 2005 they made about $5,000 more. Interestingly, women in the country as a whole have closed the gap between their earning and those of men, but still lag behind.

Social Explorer helps you understand the trends of today with decades of data and context.

A recent court ruling struck down Proposition 8, and now gays and lesbians can legally marry.  How many people might this affect?  Social Explorer can help you find out.

Since 2000, the Census has counted the number of unmarried partners, including same-sex unmarried partners, which can be an indicator of the number of people who might take the opportunity to get hitched in light of the recent court decision.

In 2000, 594,391 residents of the US identified as being in same-sex unmarried couples.  That number increased to 700,266–one in seven of which live in California, according to the 2006-08 American Community Survey.

Click the map to explore where unmarried same-sex partners live in California and around the nation.

Vampires are booming thanks to Twilight’s book sales, movie tickets and fainting fans.  With Social Explorer you can learn where they might be booming in the US too.

Count von Count wanted us to count up his vampire peers.

Of course, there is no “are you a vampire?” question on the census form, but using Social Explorer’s reports tools, you can examine the Romanian population—those hailing from the land of the legendary Transylvania, which is purportedly the land of Vampires.  (Of course being Romanian does not make one a vampire, who after all are mythical.  Besides, once bitten, one from any ancestry or origin can become a vampire.)

Vampire buzz is on the rise, and Social Explorer can (almost) let you work with vampiric datasets.

In 2000, the remote city of Forks, Washington (Clallam County), where the Twilight saga takes place, had eight residents who were born in Romania, and 29 who identified as having Romanian ancestry.

Because Clallam County has a small population, we won’t have the exact numbers on the Romanian  increase until the 2010 Census data are released, but using the American Community Survey estimates for 2006-2008, we can look at trends in Washington State to examine the population shifts.

Back in the 1920s (Nosferatu’s heyday), there were 102,803 US residents born in Romania. That number has grown to 164,294, according to the 2006-08 ACS.

As the Twilight books rose up the bestseller list, the Washington Romanian population grew too.  Between 2000 and 2008, the Romanian population in Washington State increased from 4,345 to 7,339, and the number of residents with Romanian ancestry increased from 9,964 to 17,041.

Click here to create Social Explorer reports about potential vampires, werewolves (purportedly  to have originated in Germany) and other notable populations.