Social Explorer wanted to find out how her monthly rent of $1,048.72 compared with what others pay.

Looking at the 2005-09 American Community Survey data on rent, Dunaway was indeed getting a bargain.

Assuming a three percent annual rent increase (an estimate based on prior lease rules for rent-stabilized apartments), Dunaway would have likely paid an average rent of about $933 per year (spanning from $878.28 in 2005 to $988.52 in 2009), or just 55 percent of the median monthly rent of $1,697 for the neighborhood.  During this time, her apartment would have been a good deal citywide as well, where the median rent was $1,029.

With rent consistently under $1,000, this apartment would have been less expensive than over 85.6 percent of rentals in the neighborhood.  For this Upper East Side census tract, median rent represented 26.5 percent of a household’s median income, so perhaps Dunaway was earning just $42,249.06 per year.  We may not be able to find out her actual income, but we do suspect this apartment had no wire hangers ever.

To learn more about this block and Faye Dunaway’s other properties, check out Social Explorer’s maps and reports.

Los Angeles commuters were in a tizzy as the city shut down the freeway for much-needed bridge repairs.  In a city known for its car-centric culture, the driving interruption inspired a race from Burbank to Long Beach between a JetBlue passenger, a bicyclist and a public transit rider.  The bike won and the metro came in second.  The airplane came in third, though some say a roller blader squeaked across the finish line before it.

Using the 2009 American Community Survey, Social Explorer looked up some numbers to help keep gridlocked drivers occupied.

As background, Los Angeles commuters favor cars above all other transit, but not quite as much as the country as a whole.  In New York City, by contrast, commuters favor public transit over cars by almost two to one.  The tiny green bars in the below chart illustrate that few people bike to work anywhere, though more commuters bike to work in Los Angeles than in NYC (1 percent to 0.6 percent), likely in part because of the bike-friendly weather.

Means of Transportation to Work

As one might expect, New Yorkers are far less likely to have at least one vehicle available.  In New York, 55.6 percent of people reported having at least one vehicle while over 92.4 percent of Los Angeles residents have at least one set of wheels.

Though Los Angeles commutes are longer than the national norm, New Yorkers still tend to spend more time on the way to work than their west coast counterparts.

Travel Time to Work (in minutes)

Using Social Explorer, you can explore more travel data, such as morning departure times and details on the number of vehicles per household.  Just be careful not to query data while on the road until you come to a full and complete stop.

To celebrate July 4th, Social Explorer is taking a break from fireworks and red, white and blue revelry to look back at an analysis we did of very early America.

A Look at the Capital on Independence Day

by Sydney Beveridge

As the United States celebrates the anniversary of its founding, using Social Explorer, I took a look at the nation’s first capital city of Philadelphia, then and now.  The first Census, conducted in 1790–the early years of the United States’s history–reveals some of the changes Philadelphia, along with the rest of the nation, has experienced.

Slideshow: Slavery in Philadelphia 1790-1840

The early censuses split race into two categories “white” and “nonwhite.”  Native Americans were not counted in the Census and blacks were counted for the apportionment of political representatives.  For allocating representation to states and counties based on population, a “nonwhite” counted as three fifths of a person.  (Blacks and women did not have the same voting rights as white men until the 20th century.  Women got the right to vote after the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.  Voting for African Americans was granted by the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, but blacks were kept off the voting rolls in the South until after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.)

In 1790, Philadelphia was less than five percent nonwhite.  In 2007, over 43 percent of Philadelphians were black.  Of those nonwhite residents, 373 were slaves (15 percent).  Meanwhile, neighboring areas in New Jersey (Gloucester and Burlington) had more than twice as much of the nonwhite population enslaved. By the 1830 Census, there were 20 slaves left in Philadelphia, and by the 1840 Census, there were just two slaves left.

In the early decades of the United States, most Philadelphians came from Germany and Great Britain.  Today, those groups are small in number, with just 4.6 percent of Philadelphians identifying, another 0.1 percent identifying as Pennsylvania German, and less than one percent of Philadelphians identified as British, Welsh or Scottish.

If you want to find out more about your own area, back as far as 1790 or whenever it joined the union, and up through 2007, you can do so easily with Social Explorer.

Updated: A vote on a marriage equality proposal happened in the closing moments of the New York State legislative session.  With the bill’s passage, New York would become the sixth state in the nation to allow gay marriage. Social Explorer takes a look at the potential impact.

The Census and American Community Survey collect data on same-sex and opposite-sex unmarried partners living together.  These numbers offer some insight into how many co-habitating same-sex partners might consider marriage if it became a legal right.

According to the 2009 American Community Survey:

• There were 581,300 same-sex unmarried partners nationwide.
• There were 42,618 unmarried same-sex partners in New York State.
• New York State accounts for 7.3% of same-sex partners living together.
• That translates to as many as 47,192 tuxedo rentals and 38,044 wedding gowns.

The New York Times household comparison tool created with Social Explorer and IPUMS data and analysis shows that unmarried same-sex partners have higher incomes than both married couples and unmarried opposite-sex partners.

Interactive Map of Same-Sex Unmarried Partners (American Community Survey 2005-09)

Check out Social Explorer’s map and report tools to find out more about same-sex couples and other groups.

This Father’s Day, Social Explorer would like to focus on one type of father in particular—the single father.

In 2009, there were 2,586,549 single dad households out of the total 75,530,746 family households with children.  Single father households earned $34,676 (median income), which is little more than half what married couple family households made ($61,082), but almost one and a half times what single mother households make ($23,313).

Single father households are much rarer than single mother households.  Their distribution around the country is shown in this interactive map (click to explore).

Single Father Households (2009 American Community Survey)

The table below shows the number and percentage of single father households in the US from decade to decade.

To explore more data about dads and other groups, check out Social Explorer’s map and report tools (data also makes a great Father’s Day gift–better than another tie).

According to some calendars, May 21st, 2011, is the Rapture–the day when faithful Christians will ascend to heaven while the rest of the earth’s inhabitants will be left behind to endure the end of times.

With Social Explorer, believers and nonbelievers can learn about who might be saved by using the infoGROUP’s American Church List data–the most comprehensive religious membership survey of its kind.  This survey data enables you to estimate how many Americans might disappear on Saturday.

For this example, we looked at the US and Alameda, California, the home of Family Radio leader and Judgement Day proponent Harold Camping.  With an estimated 25.9% of the population belonging to any kind of congregation, Alameda is more secular than the rest of the US where an estimated 35.6% of residents belong.  Looking at the breakdown of major religious traditions, Judgment Day followers can speculate about how many of their fellow Americans will be saved.

You can dig deeper by comparing religious congregation membership and attendance numbers, or parse hundreds of congregation types from Advent Christian Church to Yoga Institutes.

For those of you still around after Saturday, stay tuned for more new data, tools and blog posts from Social Explorer.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day and Social Explorer wants to send out a special Mother’s Day greeting to the 4,333,485 moms across the US with new babies.

Using data from the American Community Survey, you can track the number and percent of women age 15-50 who had babies in the past year.

Number of Moms with New Babies (American Community Survey)

2006: 4,182,942 (5.5%)
2007: 4,183,633 (5.5%)
2008: 4,436,577 (5.8%)
2009: 4,333,485 (5.7%)

There has been a slight increase in new babies over the past few years, particularly in 2008.  That year, moms in Nampa City, Idaho, led baby making with 14.5% of childbearing age women having recently had a baby, adding 3,114 new babies to the city.

However, moms in Gulfport City, Mississippi, experienced a big bump in baby bumps from 2008 to 2009.   The percentage of childbearing age women with newborns jumped from 8%  to 16.4%, adding 2,701 new babies to the city.

You can use Social Explorer as your baby data monitor by using the mapping and reporting tools.

Social Explorer lets users dig through all kinds of demographic and environmental data.  In honor of Earth Day, you can take a look at carbon emissions data.  This data comes from a collaboration with the Vulcan Project, a NASA/Department of Energy funded effort based at Purdue University.  The Vulcan Project has quantified US fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at space and time scales much finer than has been achieved in the past.

Carbon Emissions Data (2002)

Social Explorer users can explore carbon emissions data for 2002 here (or click the map) too look at emissions around the nation and in your own town.

With American Community Survey data, you can also look at home heating fuels.  Here is a map of where solar energy is used.

Solar Energy Use (American Community Survey 2005-09)

As you can see, this isn’t a widely-used resource yet, but if you click around the map you can see pockets of solar energy in states like Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and even Illinois.

Check out the data behind the environmental policy debates, and then do something nice for the planet on Earth Day (and every day).

With just hours to go before a government shutdown, Social Explorer takes a look at the government workers who might be sent home.

• According to the 2009 American Community Survey, there are 4,719,312 federal government employees around the nation, representing 3.4% of the workforce.
• In the Washington, DC, metro area, federal employees make up a whopping 16.3% of the workforce.
• The median income for full-time federal workers is $57,219 nationwide and $86,310 in the DC area.

Social Explorer users can learn more about federal and other workers by visiting the reports tab.

One hundred years ago today, a fire devastated the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Lower Manhattan.  Burned, trapped and injured as they tried to escape, 146 people died in the blaze.  Many of them young immigrant women, the median age of the victims was 20, and some were as young as 14.

Their deaths brought attention to dangerous working conditions in factories.  Public outcry, labor organizing and advocacy helped to improve workplace safety and employment laws.

Looking back to the victims, we know their names and something about their backgrounds thanks to remembrance projects and documentarians.   With Social Explorer, you can learn more about when and where they lived.

Using 1910 census data, we focused on downtown Manhattan census tracts where multiple victims resided (based on a map from Street Pictures).

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Victim Manhattan Neighborhoods (1910 census tract)

In these Lower East Side and Village neighborhoods, more than two thirds of residents were recently arrived immigrants.  The concentration of immigrants was high, even for Manhattan.  In the borough, 77% of residents were immigrants or the children of immigrants, while in these neighborhoods, nearly 97% were.

New York City may be a melting pot, but it was almost exclusively mixing immigrants together.  These census tracts housed almost no native born whites and even fewer blacks.  (In one of the tracts with a higher black population, the number of black residents equaled the number of residents born at sea—a scant six people.)

Many of these immigrants came from Russia (47.6%), Austria (22.7%) and Italy (12.0%), followed by Hungary (5.7%), Germany (3.9%) and Ireland (2.2%).

Social Explorer’s tools help users learn more context about the past.