While Irish eyes are smiling on St. Patrick’s Day, many Finns are already celebrating St. Urho’s Day.  The holiday was first celebrated in Minnesota on March 16th, which happens to be just before St. Patrick’s Day.

It honors the legendary Urho, the patron saint of vineyard workers.  As the story goes, he saved the grape crop from a grasshopper infestation with his horrible breath as he yelled, “Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!”  (Grasshopper, grasshopper, go away!)

Social Explorer has data throughout the years on a multitude of ancestries, including the Finnish.

• Soon after the first St. Urho’s Day was celebrated, the 1960 census reported that there were 240,827 people in the US born in Finland, representing 0.1 percent of the total population.
• Over 15 percent of them resided in Minnesota, where St. Urho celebrations first originated.
• According to the 2010 American Community Survey, there are now 647,697 residents of Finnish ancestry, making up about 0.2 percent of the total population.

Some St. Urho’s Day revelers dress up as grasshoppers and grapes to celebrate.  Social Explorer makes its data festive with purples and greens in the map below.  As you can see, Finns are especially concentrated in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Explore the map to see where you should plan your next St. Urho’s Day outing, or if you are a grasshopper, where to avoid.

Map of Finnish Residents in the US (2006-10 Census)

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Happy St. Urho’s Day!

The once-a-decade redistricting process is heating up in New York as deadlines approach and the legislature, governor, advocacy groups, public and the federal courts become more involved.  There was a court hearing on Monday on what map looked like.

On Monday, magistrate judge Roanne Mann held a public hearing.  Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge testified on behalf of the Center for Law and Social Justice and Newman Ferrara LLP.  Based on decades of demographic experience, including work as a consultant and expert witness in redistricting cases, Beveridge analyzed data from the various plans and the changing demographics of New York.

Since the court hearing, Judge Mann put forth her own plan.  Notably, it includes a new Asian-majority district in Queens, with 39.1 percent of the district.  This district was drawn in response to the major population changes in the area (where over 500,000 Asians reside) and around the city (32 percent growth).

New York 1 produced a story on this proposed district, and included an interview with Beveridge.

For more on the latest New York State redistricting news, check out the New York Times series Unmapped.

In his latest op-ed “Santorum’s Gospel of Inequality,” New York Times columnist Charles Blow takes on the presidential candidate’s public comments about how income inequality is good for society.

Blow writes that “for Santorum to champion income inequality in Detroit, of all places, is still incredibly tone-deaf.”  He cites data from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge in his discussion.

Detroit has the highest poverty rate of any big city in America, according to data provided by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College. Among the more than 70 cities with populations over 250,000, Detroit’s poverty rate topped the list at a whopping 37.6 percent, more than twice the national poverty rate. And according to the Census Bureau, median household income in Detroit from 2006-10 was just $28,357, which was only 55 percent of the overall U.S. median household income over that time.

Beveridge also provided data for a list of the most impoverished cities in America, featured in the article.

Click here to read the rest of the op-ed and see the full list.

In New York City, a large number of first generation children from wealthy families are going to public schools, even though their parents could afford private school.  In the New York Times article “Affluent, Born Abroad and Choosing New York’s Public Schools,” Kirk Semple examines the trend in school choice among foreign-born parents.  The article features census data and analysis from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge and Susan Weber-Stoger.

In New York, the affluent typically send their children to private schools. But not the foreign-born affluent. In a divergence, a large majority of wealthy foreign-born New Yorkers are sending their children to public schools, according to an analysis of census data.

There are roughly 15,500 households in the city with school-age children where the total income is at least $150,000 and both parents were born abroad. Of those, about 10,500, or 68 percent, use only the public schools, the data show.

That is nearly double the rate of American-born parents in the city in the same income bracket.

In the United States over all, there is almost no difference between the two groups, apparently because wealthy people outside of urban areas are much more likely to show allegiance to the public schools. Nationally, 73 percent of native-born couples and 76 percent of foreign-born couples send their children only to public school, according to the data, which was analyzed by Andrew A. Beveridge and Susan Weber-Stoger, demographers at Queens College.

The article goes on to detail the motivations behind this trend in school choices, such as seeking ethnic and economic diversity, living in neighborhoods with better public schools and avoiding private school tuition.

Click here to read the whole story.

In today’s New York Times, sociologist Eric Klinenberg writes about the major demographic shift he examines in his new book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. Census data show that more than 32 million Americans live alone today.  The article features graphics based on analysis by Social Explorer’s Susan Weber and Andrew Beveridge, from historical and current census data.  Klinenberg investigates this trend across different genders, ages, races, incomes and more, both in the US and internationally.

More people live alone than at any other time in history. In prosperous American cities — Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Minneapolis — 40 percent or more of all households contain a single occupant. In Manhattan and in Washington, nearly one in two households are occupied by a single person.

The decision to live alone is common in diverse cultures whenever it is economically feasible…

The mere thought of living alone once sparked anxiety, dread and visions of loneliness. But those images are dated. Now the most privileged people on earth use their resources to separate from one another, to buy privacy and personal space.

Living alone comports with modern values. It promotes freedom, personal control and self-realization — all prized aspects of contemporary life.

Klinenberg also analyzes how singletons are more actively engaged in social and civic life than their partnered peers.

Read more about the phenomenon, and explore the data and interactive maps here.

In the Queens Tribune article “Fighting for Representation: Battles on the Horizon over Redistricting in Burgeoning Asian Communities,” Ross Barkin writes about a growing legislative redistricting controversy in Eastern Queens.

Already, a skirmish is underway between the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) and State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside). AALDEF, along with the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, and the National Institute for Latino Policy, came together to create a “Unity Map,” a proposal for redistricting Congressional, Assembly, and State Senate lines in the City. AALDEF, along with these other groups, seeks to take into account the shifting demographics in the 2010 Census, including the surge in the Asian population of northeast Queens.

The Queens Chinese population has grown by nearly 43 percent since 2000, and the Asian Indian population has jumped almost 8 percent. Overall, the Asian population in Queens is roughly 23 percent.

He discusses the arguments from politicians, advocacy groups and community interests.  He turns to Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge for further explanation of the issues:

Ultimately, whether or not the Asian population deserves more favorable district lines, their advocates’ efforts will most likely fail because the legal process will foil them, said redistricting consultant and Queens College sociology professor Dr. Andrew Beveridge.

“The law is that to have the ability legally to get a district, you need several criteria,” he said. “One is that you have to have a history of polarized voting, with non-Asian groups that frustrate the ability to form a voting bloc. You need Asians voting cohesively as a bloc. And a third thing you need to show is that there is a district where they would have a majority if you drew it.”

Beveridge explained that at least 50 percent of citizens of a voting age population are needed to form a specific voting coalition. Although the Asian population in the district created may exceed 50 percent, those who cannot vote—especially non-citizen immigrants—will lower that percentage. An “Asian influence” district could be formed, but it would be up to politicians to accommodate the expanding minority.

Beveridge said he does not think they will.

Read the whole article here.

In the New York Times article, “View of the World From New Hampshire and Iowa,” Juliet Lapidos details the constituencies in the first Republican primary state contests.  With data from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge, she breaks down state-by-state demographics, beginning with a look at the large number of white people in both states:

This is not surprising: Iowa is 88.6 percent white, and New Hampshire 92.2 percent white. Compare those numbers to the country as a whole, which is 63.7 percent white.

Large white populations are not the only ways in which these two early-voting states, which play such a significant role in choosing presidential nominees, fail to reflect the United States in the 21^st century.

I asked Andrew Beveridge, a sociologist who has done consulting work for The Times and is the CEO of Social Explorer, to help me put the demographic differences between Iowa, New Hampshire and the United States into perspective.

She lists a number of 2010 census numbers about these state populations and how they compare to the rest of the US, and concludes that:

New Hampshire and Iowa are less ethnically diverse, have less unemployment, and have more married-couple households than the rest of the country. New Hampshire does better, and Iowa slightly worse than the national average on household income and college graduates. Stopping well short of saying that Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t “the real America,” it’s clear that these states aren’t average, either.

She goes on to show what the most “average” states are in each category (racial composition, education, median income, etc.).

For the full rundown of data and analysis, visit the New York Times.

In addition to new data for the New Year, we now have new maps for the New Year.  The five-year American Community Survey (2006-2010) data are now available on Social Explorer’s maps.  These data come from the American Community Survey (ACS), an extensive annual survey administered by the Census Bureau to a sample of about 3 million households nationwide.  This five-year file offers subscribers a new level of detailed demographic information.

You can drill down to the tract level with these data resources and enjoy all the interactivity of Social Explorer’s mapping tools.  For more on these data, how they compare with other ACS and Census data and more, read the recent data update.

Social Explorer is ringing in the New Year with new data!   The five-year American Community Survey (2006-2010) data are now available on Social Explorer.  These data come from the American Community Survey (ACS), an extensive annual survey administered by the Census Bureau to a sample of about 3 million households nationwide.  This five-year file offers subscribers a new level of detailed demographic information.  (Where the 2010 ACS shares information at the PUMA level–about 65,000 in population–and the 2008-10 ACS shares information at 20,000 in population, the five-year file shares data down to the Census Tract and Block Group.)  We also have available all of the 2010 Census Data, which is based upon seven questions, also down to the block group.

It is important to note that comparing the 2010 ACS data with earlier ACS years could lead to faulty comparisons.  Now that the Census Bureau has the official 2010 numbers, it readjusted the population base for the 2010 survey and all prior surveys in its data products.  This means that information presented in the last few years would be different because they were adjusted to the new base.  In short, comparing 2010 to say 2009, one cannot be sure if the change is real or based upon adjustment, so always check your numbers.

Also, for those concerned with the ending of the the “Legacy Version” of the Census Bureau’s American Factfinder on January 20th, we want to assure you that we do not plan any interface changes.  This means you can keep accessing data from 1790 through 2010 through Social Explorer using our familiar interface.

Subscribers can access this and the rest of our data through the maps and the reports tabs. The ACS 2006-2010 data are currently up as reports, and we are testing the maps for release in a few days. Click here to find out more about subscribing to all of Social Explorer’s tools and resources.

You can expect many new features in Social Explorer in the New Year, including updated data on religious congregations, new localized data on major cities in the United States, and a host of new features for mapping, visualizing and saving your research.

Social Explorer wishes demography fans everywhere a very Happy New Year!