As the Academy Awards judges total up the votes for tonight’s awards ceremony, Social Explorer is tallying up Oscar night demographics.

True Grit brought movie viewers into the Coen brothers’ adaptation of Charles Portis’ tale from the American countryside.  With Social Explorer, you can venture deeper into 1870s Arkansas data.

Arkansas Map 1870

In True Grit, the story’s central Ross family hail from Yell County, AK a county west of Little Rock.  In 1870, the county had 8,048 residents and 595 farms–more than one farm for every 14 people.  Over 99% of the population were raised by parents born in the US.

In the movie, young Mattie Ross heads towards Fort Smith, AK, (in Sebastian County) where her father was recently shot and killed.  Both counties were about 90% white, and about one in four people couldn’t write.  In 1870, the Census Bureau counted the number of religious congregations in the US.  Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian congregations were the most numerous in Sebastian and Yell counties.

Deck yourself out with red carpet data using Social Explorer.

New Yorkers and Knicks fans are celebrating the arrival of basketball phenom Carmelo Anthony.  For Anthony, it’s also a Brooklyn homecoming.  While some look at his debut game stats, Social Explorer is looking to score some data points.

Since Anthony was born in 1984, we’ll focus on the 1980 census data.  Locating his Brooklyn block using the find tool, we can create reports to learn more about his neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Anthony grew up in the Red Hook housing projects—one of the largest public housing complexes in the US.  In 1990, LIFE Magazine named the neighborhood one of the worst in the US and dubbed it the “crack capital of America.”  Today, it is also home to an IKEA furniture store and a Fairway grocery.

Much like the Knicks franchise, the neighborhood has changed substantially in many respects, but not in others.  The data show that the once 71.9% African American neighborhood is now 47.8%.  (Anthony, who is African American and Puerto Rican, would have been part of the 8.5% Hispanic/black category, which has since decreased to 3.2%.)

The median income (adjusted for inflation to 2009 dollars) decreased from $18,117 to $14,321 between 1980 and now, with the poverty rate for the area increasing from 38.2% to 62.6%.  Meanwhile, the nationwide median income increased from $49,879 to $51,425.

In 1980, single female-headed households made up 39.4% of the neighborhood. This was nearly twice the borough average and four times the national average. (When Anthony’s father passed away, his home would have been in this category.)  Now, nearly half of family households are headed by a single female (49.8%).

The unemployment rate for men was 12.4% in 1980–nearly twice the national rate of 6.5%.  Today, it has increased to 32.2%–over four times the national rate of 7.3%.

Whether playing in the NCAA or not, residents who attended at least one year of college in the neighborhood increased from 9.4% of the neighborhood population in 1980 to 23.2% today.  Though still lagging behind the national rate (55.2%), the local increase outpaced the national rise.

To learn more about change in Red Hook or other neighborhoods, check out Social Explorer’s maps and reports.

The controversy over union benefits in Wisconsin has brought great attention to the public service sector there and across the nation.  Social Explorer can help you learn about the different sectors of the workforce and how they have changed over time.

The Census tracks data on employment, including sector (such as private, public, self-employed, nonprofit and unpaid home workers).  Using Social Explorer we can track public sector workers in Wisconsin and nationwide.

A 2005-09 American Community Survey map shows details of where public service reside.

The following tables based on Social Explorer reports provide the number of people in the public service sector across the decades.

For instance, the US has added over 8 million public service employees to the workforce since 1970.  But, overall, the public service sector shrank 1.5% over the past forty years and now represents 14.6% of the labor force according to the 2005-09 American Community Survey.

In Wisconsin, public service workers make up 12.2% of the state’s labor force, a decline of 1.9% during the same time period.  You can explore this data and more with Social Explorer’s maps and reports.

If you’re looking for a Valentine, let Social Explorer help you map your way to love.  Cupid crunches the numbers to make the most of his arrows, and you should too.

You can look up nationwide information on the 55.6 million available men and 63.5 million available women, or take a lesson from “The Situation,” and analyze the ratio of single women to single men to plan your next night out.

You can use tables like the 2005-09 American Community Survey’s “Sex By Marital Status By Age For The Population 15 Years And Over” to hone in on where your future honey may (or may not) dwell.

Check out Social Explorer’s maps and reports for more information on singles.  It’s not just a coincidence that “data” is just one letter away from “date.”  And you will be sure to impress with a demographics-related pickup line.

Happy Valentine’s Day from Social Explorer!

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.

This Sunday, the Green Bay Packers face off against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV.

As fans enjoy nachos, cheers and cheese hats for the big dance, Social Explorer is prepping game day demographic data.  Instead of the NFL, we’re the NDL (National Data League),  and we’re bringing you AFC fans American Football Calculations.

To predict how this first-time Super Bowl matchup might do, let’s take a look at the teams’ home cities in 2009.   Since the teams both won in the late 1990s (Steelers in 1996, Packers in 1997), we’ll also look to the 1990 and 2000 census numbers.

As the data reveal, the more populous Pittsburgh has always had over three times as many potential local fans as Green Bay, but Pittsburgh has seen a much steeper population decline during the past two decades.  Similarly, we can trace the maximum number of gameday gatherings (and corresponding nachos and cheers estimates) by looking at the number of occupied homes.

Both team names were inspired by the manufacturing sector–the prominent Pittsburgh steel industry for the Steelers, and the meat-canning Indian Packing Company for the Packers.   As shown, the manufacturing sector has declined in both cities.  Green Bay has a larger portion of its workforce in the manufacturing industry (three times as much), but it has also seen a larger decline over the past two decades.  (2005-09 American Community Survey data offer detailed industry and occupation information.)

This Sunday, crunch some numbers with Social Explorer while you enjoy your Super Bowl snacks because no Super Bowl party is complete without a big bowl of data.

As the Census Bureau releases the state-by-state 2010 data over the next few weeks, the New York Times will be relying on Social Explorer data and expertise to help tell the stories of the numbers.

Today, the New York Times covered the scope of population shifts after the devastating 2005 hurricane in “Smaller New Orleans After Katrina, Census Shows.”  The Times cited Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge in its findings that:

• The city has roughly 24,000 fewer white residents than it did 10 years ago, though the proportion of the white population has grown to 30 percent.
• The city has 118,000 fewer black residents. New Orleans, once more than two-thirds black, is now less than 60 percent black.
• There are 56,193 fewer children, a drop of nearly 44 percent.
• St. Tammany Parish, a suburban refuge for many New Orleanians after the storm, grew by nearly a quarter.
• St. Bernard Parish, which is downriver from the city and was almost completely overwhelmed by the floodwaters, shrank by nearly half.
• The Hispanic population of neighboring Jefferson Parish, home to many of those who came to fill the city’s ravenous appetite for construction labor, jumped by 65 percent.

Social Explorer also provided data for illustrative maps of these and other changes in New Orleans.

Also today, in the article “New Jersey’s Ethnic Makeup Shifts, and Population Drifts Southward,” the New York Times covers demographic trends around the Garden State.

In the last decade, the white population declined, while Hispanic and Asian populations grew the most.  The Black population shrank in some areas, like East Orange, in grew in others, like Union City.

Accompanying maps developed with Social Explorer data illustrate racial and ethnic population patterns, as well as the boom in vacant homes.

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Watch the New York Times and our blog for more demographic and map features as the official 2010 Census data rolls out.

In “How Segregated Is Your Community?  Find Out Here,” The Huffington Post highlights Remapping the Debate’s article about segregation and Social Explorer’s interactive mapping tools, which we announced on the blog last month.  Dan Froomkin writes:

As the minority population in the United States continues to grow, the nation is, in aggregate, getting more diverse. But at the street level, it’s often a different story.

Now, a new web-based tool offers members of the general public a visually dramatic, incredibly granular look at the racial composition of their communities, almost at the block by block level.

And the sad fact is that in most U.S. cities there are effectively boundaries, on either side of which people of different backgrounds live mostly with people like themselves.

“Segregation is an issue today, even though a lot of people prefer to think that it’s not,” said Craig Gurian. “When you look at this map, it’s much harder to deny this very fundamental reality about American society.”

The maps and analysis underscore critical questions about segregation in America, and just in time for Black History Month.

The Huffington Post story inspired more than 500,000 users to create segregation maps over the past two days.  Click here to make one of your own.