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.

This past weekend, Social Explorer attended the National Conference of States Legislatures (NCSL) Redistricting Seminar in DC.  The two and a half day event brought together legislators, lawyers and redistricting enthusiasts of all kinds to participate in panel discussions and hands-on exercises.

As Nathan Gonzalez wrote in Roll Call, “Some of the most powerful people you’ve never heard of are coming to the Washington, D.C., area this week, and their legacy will last at least a decade…The NCSL seminar marks a final step before the hypothetical maps and strategies move to the reality of the parties drawing new maps in each state.”

The American Community Survey (ACS) was one of the valuable redistricting resources discussed at the conference.  The 2005-09 ACS offers recent data and a count of the Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP)–useful when considering how to draw district lines.  Earlier this month, Social Explorer made this wealth of ACS demographic data available to users.

Social Explorer users can quickly and easily access the same data tools that the professionals redistricters use.

A new article on Remapping Debate examines persistent racial segregation in the US.  The story “Mapping and analysis of new data documents still-segregated America,” explores the realities of racial segregation in neighborhoods across the nation.  Working with tools provided by Social Explorer, Remapping Debate released interactive maps that can zoom down to the Census Block Group level anywhere in the US, showing the high concentration of segregated neighborhoods.

Social Explorer segregation map from Remapping Debate

(red areas are 0% African American and gray areas are more than 50% African American)

Social Explorer map showing segregation along Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn, NY

Remapping Debate analysis of 2005-09 American Community Survey data found that:

• In a country that is only 12.1 percent African-American, 30 percent of African-Americans live in Census Block Groups that are 75 percent African-American or more.
• 75 percent of African-Americans in the country live in only 16 percent of the Census Block Groups in the United States.
• 50 percent of African-Americans live in Census Block Groups that have a combined African-American and Latino population of 66.85 percent or more (nationally, the latino population is approximately 15.8 percent, so the combined African-American and Latino population is just shy of only 28 percent).

Explore the maps and feature by clicking here.

Social Explorer announces the release of the American Community Survey 2005-2009 (Five-Year File).  The American Community Survey (ACS) has replaced the famous Census “Long Form,” and collects data on a variety of important topics, including education, employment, income, citizenship, place of birth, migration, ancestry or ethnic background, health coverage and so much more.

The New York Times and Social Explorer put together a selection of this data for a feature the day it was released, and now the entire ACS is available to Social Explorer users.

The data include over 23,000 columns (or data fields) and some 675,000 geographic units.  All together, there are over 11.1 billion data elements.

Much of the data is available in map form, for states, counties, places, tracts and block groups.  All of the data released by the Census Bureau, including the error files, are now accessible using our reporting tools.

In the New York Times article “There Stays the Neighborhood,” Jacob Berger writes East Elmhurst, NY–a neighborhood where, unlike elsewhere in the city, residents put down roots and stay put for generations.  The data also reveal that neighborhood residents tend to be older and predominately African American compared to the rest of the city.  This analysis includes data and analysis from the American Community Survey and a comment from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge.

Berger writer:

Residents of an East Elmhurst census tract stay in their homes the longest of residents of any of the more than 2,000 census tracts in New York City,according to an examination of recently released data from Census Bureau surveys from 2005 to 2009. The median move-in date for homeowners there is 1974 — more than 36 years ago.

The average New York City homeowner has lived in the same house since 1995, almost 20 years after the average family moved in to the Dixons’ tract in East Elmhurst. (After the East Elmhurst tract, the census tracts that rank next for stability of residency are in Cambria Heights in Queens on the Nassau County border, where the median resident moved in 1976, and Schuylerville in the Bronx near the Throgs Neck Bridge, where the median move-in year was 1979, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a Queens College demographer.)

Click here to read the full article.

In his latest Gotham Gazette Demographics column, “Census Brings Unpleasant Surprise for State Politicians,” Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge examines New York’s population count and what it means for political power.

In 2010, the census counted 163,351 fewer people in New York State than it estimated in 2009.  Because of this population decline, New York will lose two congressional seats.

The loss of two congressional seats will set off a huge redistricting fight. Beyond representation in Congress, the diminished New York state population will have a major impact on the amount of federal aid that the state receives.

Demographers and politicos are scratching their heads trying to figure out how this happened and what the implications will be. Unlike California, which has already claimed an undercount and protests the census results , New York state is still contemplating the impact and sources of this apparent population loss.

Whatever the reason for the lower count in New York State, the implications for congressional redistricting are massive. Most of the population losses occurred in upstate New York, while the gains were in areas in and around the city, most particularly in outer ring suburbs.

Thanks to the new census count, New York state is now in for two separate games of musical chairs to find out which representatives will no longer have seats to call their own.

Beveridge also explores the potential impact on individual upstate and downstate districts.  For more on the underestimated numbers and their consequences for New York (or your home district), click here to read the full article.