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Five Things the Census Revealed About America in 2011
The Brookings Institute and similar organizations have begun the analysis of the 2010 Census. Analysis breaks things into components that allow a look at American life and how a better understanding of these parts might improve the value of that life in new and unexpected ways. Here are five from a recent Brookings report…
- Despite the recent decade’s slowdown in population growth to just 9.7%, America remains one of the fastest-growing developed nations. We added the equivalent of more than three-quarters of Canada’s population in just 10 years, helping to replenish our workforce and offset the costs of an aging society. Population growth will continue to vary greatly across the national and metropolitan maps, but ongoing restructuring in the U.S. economy and housing market may cut somewhat the imbalances from the 2000s in the years to come.
- Americans move around more than their counterparts in other developed countries, but a lot less than they used to. Some fear that in the short run, homeowners tend to stay in places with too few jobs, and not able or willing to move to places with healthier labor markets. Longer run, and perhaps more importantly, states and metro areas that relied too heavily on in-migration for growth must re-calibrate their economies to create better, more diverse job opportunities for current and future residents.
- Large metro areas, and increasingly their suburbs, stand at the forefront of America’s transformation into a multiethnic society. How they respond to and manage that shift, especially the social and economic opportunities they provide to a highly diverse population of families with children, will establish the course for our nation’s well-being over the coming decades. Rapid growth in the immigrant population in some parts of the country produced late-decade policy backlashes that could threaten these places’ longer-run economic well-being.
- The older population is growing everywhere, and a host of public and private services will be adapted to an aging population in the decades to come. Areas that are also gaining younger populations may have a resource advantage in responding to those changes, compared to rapidly aging northern states and metro areas. Yet because the former areas have more racially and ethnically diverse young people, they too may face challenges in managing competition for scarce public resources between predominantly white seniors and minority families with children.
- Census 2000 captured American households at a high-water mark economically, a far different situation than they faced in 2010. Economic growth strategies for the coming decade must place greater emphasis on achieving shared prosperity that lifts incomes for a broad segment of households. With unemployment projected to stay high for some time, many parts of the country will face higher fiscal and social burdens associated with poverty, including concentrated poverty, for the foreseeable future. All metro areas, meanwhile, must continue to adapt a traditionally city-focused social services infrastructure for helping the poor to take advantage of region-wide needs.