Each Thursday this month Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge has been a guest on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show to talk about shifts in new and old ethnic neighborhoods around the city.  Listeners can join the project by contributing their own thoughts and neighborhood notes here.

This Week: Tibet and Brazil

This week, community organizer for The Tibetan Community of New York and New Jersey, Champa Norgom, talks about the community of Tibetan refugees living in Queens.

And General Counsel for Cidadao Global, Stephanie Mulcock, and Selma Baron, the owner of Brazilian grocery store, Ipanema Girl, will talk about life in little Brazil.

And click here to find out more about this turning data into art.

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.

Each Thursday this month Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge will be a guest on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show to talk about shifts in new and old ethnic neighborhoods around the city.  Listeners can join the project by contributing their own thoughts and neighborhood notes here.

This Week: Ecuadorians and a Call for Artists!

New York State Assemblyman Francisco Moya, the city’s first Ecuadorian-American elected official, talks about Little Ecuador in Corona, Queens.

And click here to find out more about this turning data into art.

For those of you who may be going to the American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans this weekend, Social Explorer wanted to let you know that Andrew Beveridge will be at the Oxford University Press booth at 2:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon.

As you know, Social Explorer is now distributed by Oxford University Press, and this will be a great opportunity to learn more about our data, tools and subscriptions.  We are in the midst of a massive upgrade and will have many new features, visualization options, and data sets in the next two years.

The exhibition hall is open during the conference from 5:30 p.m. Friday, June 24th through 2:00 p.m. Monday, June 27th.  We hope that you will stop by Oxford University Press’s booth to learn more about Social Explorer and let us know how you and your patrons use it.

Many librarians know a lot about our data and online tool resources, and we wanted to learn more about them.  Social Explorer’s Sydney Beveridge, Susan Weber and Andrew Beveridge researched data on librarians and authored this piece for Oxford University Press

“Librarians in the U.S. from 1880-2009: An analysis using 120 years of census data”

The U.S. Census first collected data on librarians in 1880, a year after the founding of the American Library Association.  They only counted 636 librarians nationwide.  Indeed, one respondent reported on his census form that he was the “Librarian of Congress.”  The U.S. Census, which became organized as a permanent Bureau in 1902, can be used to track the growth of the library profession.  The number of librarians grew over the next hundred years, peaking at 307,273 in 1990.  Then, the profession began to shrink, and as of 2009, it had dropped by nearly a third to 212,742.  The data enable us to measure the growth, the gender split in this profession known to be mostly female, and to explore other divides in income and education, as they changed over time.

(This analysis, which is preliminary, is based upon the original Census materials organized by the Minnesota Population Center.  They are available as the Integrated Public Use Micro-data Samples (IPUMS).  Available at www.ipums.org.)

Check out the full feature for more on your favorite bibliophiles.

With the interactive tool “How Many Households Are Like Yours?” you can explore different types of American households and see how they have changed over time.  Social Explorer analyzed data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) for the feature, which was created by Jeremy White, Ford Fessenden, Sergio Pecanha and Matthew Ericson.

The household interactive tool is a companion to the article “Baby Makes Four, and Complications” about a very atypical family.  Click on the figures to build your household and start comparing.

For instance, single female households constitute 15.28% of all households, while single male households make up 12.05%.  The numbers of both of these types of households have been on the rise and compared to other groups, a higher proportion of blacks live in these households and the greatest number of these households have incomes below $30,000.

You can explore the dynamics of a wide variety of household types, and you can add children, housemates and relatives into the mix as well.  Start learning more about all kinds of American families here.

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).

In his latest Gotham Gazette demographics column “Failure of Redistricting Reform Could Bring Reprise of 2002’s Fiasco,” Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge details what’s at stake with the upcoming redistricting round in New York.

As the current state legislative session winds down, efforts to reform the redistricting process in New York state appear to be dead. Yet, at this very moment the new Citizens Redistricting Commission in California, which has final authority, has released a preliminary plan that in the process of cleaning up lines would radically alter the California congressional delegation.

It would add up to five Hispanic seats, increase the number of Democrats and throw a number of sitting U.S. representatives into the same district. Beyond that, the commission’s proposal may end up creating the Democratic super majorities in both houses of the state legislature needed to raise the state’s taxes and pull it out of its financial crisis.

Meanwhile in New York state, despite former Mayor Ed Koch’s efforts to get many legislators to pledge to vote for reform, despite the fact that Gov. Andrew Cuomo claims to be making it a priority and despite universal support of the usual good government groups, no bill has been reported out or is expected to come to the floor before the session is over in a few days. This means that the same chaotic system that brought us an impasse in Congress and the deadlocked State Senate will remain in place for this round.

He goes on to explain obstacles specific to New York, the chaos of the 2002 round of redistricting, and maps and numbers with a breakdown of recent population shifts and necessary changes to district lines.  He concludes:

The population’s changes are massive, but the legislature together with the governor have chosen to keep complete control of the redistricting process (except for possible court or Justice Department intervention) for another round. They will maintain their power, as they have in the past. Unlike California, there is little prospect for fair redistricting in New York State, only chaos similar to the last round.

Click here to read the entire article.  He recently testified at a redistricting reform hearing in Albany, which you can read about here.

Each Thursday this month Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge will be a guest on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show to talk about shifts in new and old ethnic neighborhoods around the city.  Listeners can join the project by contributing their own thoughts and neighborhood notes here.

This Week: Guyanans, Italians, and A Map!

Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge testified in federal court this week on the new district lines for New York’s Nassau County.  Last month, the Republican majority of the county legislature passed a new redistricting proposal over complaints from the Democratic minority and community members.  For more on the battle over the plans, read this New York Times article.  Newsday subscribers can read the latest coverage of the trial here.

In court, Beveridge stated that the proposal would dilute the minority vote and break up black and Hispanic voting blocks in Elmont.  In his analysis, he noted that the new lines would move 44% of the county population to different districts, while alternative plans would move just 9% of the population.

Keep an eye on the blog for news about Nassau County and other redistricting plans and controversies.