"Chinatown" communities across the United States (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco) are undergoing a shift in linguistic identity, as recent immigrants are more likely to natively speak Mandarin (the official spoken language of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan,) instead of Cantonese. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Oct 22, 2009 - 56 comments

Japan is facing a demographic crisis that will shrink the population dramatically. The Japanese aren't having babies, and the country won't accept immigrants to help bolster the population. Japan: Robot Nation looks at a uniquely Japanese solution. [more inside]
posted by Extopalopaketle on Sep 21, 2009 - 55 comments

What if we condensed the UK into a village of 100 people? The Independent experiment with demographics.
posted by mippy on Jul 21, 2009 - 111 comments

I have heard many explanations of the housing crisis, but First Things, A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life had one that I had never heard: America’s housing market collapsed because conservatives lost the culture wars even back while they were prevailing in electoral politics. A number of observers have pointed to household formation as a key driver in the current and future housing markets, but no one else I have run across writes things like "the world is poorer now because the present generation did not bother to rear a new generation".
posted by Adamchik on Apr 28, 2009 - 49 comments

Texas is sticky; Wyoming is not. Arizona is a magnet, but New York, surprisingly, isn’t. Nevada is both a magnet but not sticky. A Pew Center report examines “Who Moves? Who Stays Put? Where's Home?” (previous Pew Center reports on who’s in jail, and who can identify Dick Cheney, among others.)
posted by cogneuro on Jan 28, 2009 - 39 comments

Billionaires have more grandchildren through their sons than through their daughters, because the status advantage is more reproductively valuable to the sons. Therefore, it would be adaptive for the mothers of their children to bear more sons than daughters. But surely that can't be; mothers can't control the sex of their children. Oh but so it is: billionaires have 60% male children. [more inside]
posted by grobstein on Jan 17, 2009 - 69 comments

Are you a young middle-class creative type (probably white) who has chosen to live in an urban neighborhood that your parents would have shunned? Have the families that formerly lived in your neighborhood (probably not white) been pushed out by soaring rents and real-estate prices to the city fringes or suburbs? The New Republic on demographic inversion.
posted by digaman on Aug 2, 2008 - 64 comments

Baby Bust! After 200 years of exponential population growth, and just four decades after overpopulation doomsaying began filling the bestseller lists, the First World is suddenly gripped with underpopulation hysteria. The governments of the developed world have always maintained an interest in birthrates and procreation, but the reasons why are changing, and the ensuing demographic debates about gender, race and culture are "ideologically fraught and scientifically questionable."
posted by amyms on Jun 16, 2008 - 120 comments

Billboards that display a personal message for you...that was sort of cute, and voluntary. Billboards with speakers that focused sound on a spot...voices in your head are not so cute, and not voluntary. Billboards that photograph you, and him, and her, process the imagery, perform a statistical analysis, and return a targeted ad based on your demographic profile...maybe plan a different route home....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth on May 31, 2008 - 21 comments

Look up any Zip Code here, get lots of cool demographic data by entering it here (make sure you enter a zip code, not just a town and keep scrolling down, down, down). [more inside]
posted by Rafaelloello on May 10, 2008 - 27 comments

Census sensitivity. The Economist takes a look at the politics of enumeration.
posted by goo on Dec 23, 2007 - 14 comments

Over the past couple of years, Facebook has become increasingly popular, until it seemed like everyone and their grandma was joining up. A new feature, called Facebook Beacon, lets corporations join the fray. Might this be cause for concern? [more inside]
posted by Reggie Digest on Nov 19, 2007 - 49 comments

In April 2007, A List Apart and An Event Apart conducted a survey of people who make websites. Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey’s 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Oct 18, 2007 - 47 comments

Zipskinny Enter your zip code and get US census info-plus compare with other zip codes.
posted by konolia on Oct 17, 2007 - 48 comments

With President Bush hoping to make Hillary the democratic nominee so the Republicans will be ensured a victory, recent Republican decisions in the face of a huge demographic shift may be suggesting an electorate which leans further left in some traditional Republican strongholds. Are Bush's actions a last ditch attempt in the face of long term shift in the Democrats' favor?
posted by gandledorf on Sep 26, 2007 - 263 comments

Animated population pyramids project a steady increase in the median age. England and Wales. United States. Canada. China. Japan. "The number of older persons has tripled over the last 50 years; it will more than triple again over the next 50 years." [pdf] There will be a shortage of workers to support the retired and disabled. The looming crisis has been predicted for years. Proposed solutions include robots and immigration. [previously, previously]
posted by desjardins on Aug 29, 2007 - 39 comments

“With the number of human beings having increased more than six-fold in the past 200 years, the modern mind simply assumes that men and women . . . will always breed enough children to grow the population . . . Yet, for more than a generation now, well-fed, healthy, peaceful populations around the world have been producing too few children to avoid population decline. . . . Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.”
posted by jason's_planet on Apr 26, 2007 - 79 comments

An average of 81 people die of gunshot wounds in the US each day. Most of them aren't who you'd expect.
posted by alms on Apr 22, 2007 - 149 comments

Proported [Leaked] Walmart Internal-Marketing Presentation. Hate Walmart? Well, you're now a Conscientuous Objector (14% of their market). Read up on the Price-Value Shopper, the Brand Aspirationals, and the Price Sensitive Affluents, and see if you can figure out where you are in the Walmart Universe.
posted by rzklkng on Mar 6, 2007 - 46 comments

Miracles You’ll See In The Next Fifty Years (Feb, 1950)
Some more up-to-date predictions: science, invention, space travel, colonisation, immortality, water shortage, flooding, nanotech, techno-apocalypse, extinction, mental health, smart machines, robots, mind uploading, AI, Asia, economics, demographics, goverance, cities. What is your prediction?
posted by MetaMonkey on Oct 5, 2006 - 54 comments

CensusScope. US Census 2000 data displayed through maps, rankings, and charts. [more inside] Warning: some pages render funny, but usable, under Firefox 1.5.0.4.
posted by Slithy_Tove on Aug 18, 2006 - 7 comments

It's official. Microsoft-verified. Mefites are predominantly teenage males. 85% of eBay users are female. Most people who search for Britney Spears are 30 year old females. Real men don't use YouTube and no male would be caught dead using Google. Oh and a million other things you're never going to believe about the web.
posted by zaebiz on Jun 28, 2006 - 65 comments

Emory University study describes the Millenial Generation An interesting comparison of Gen Xers and the so-called Millenial Generation, born since 1982, from Emory University. The M.Gen kids apparently want to do good, as long as there is a clear structure and leadership that tells them how and what to do . . . oh, and don't question the leaders. Really. Why would you?
posted by pt68 on Mar 2, 2006 - 67 comments

"Newbies" have become a rare breed and other interesting conclusions from the Pew Internet & American Life Project's very readable (if PDF) report on 'net usage demographics, published 10/5. [ty biri]
posted by scarabic on Dec 30, 2005 - 10 comments

Google Maps and Census Data. Navigate to a place via Google Maps. Click and you get Census demographic data such as population, median income and housing.
posted by caddis on Sep 14, 2005 - 18 comments

The first time as tragedy... Two of the three historic US' biggest auto makers (the other became a subsidiary of a German firm a few years back) just had their stocks rated as junk by Moody's, victims of a changing marketplace and demographics. Last time, Chrysler got a bailout from the US government, although maybe it would've been better if that hadn't happened. Would the Fed'rul Gummint step in again, or just let the dinosaurs' extinction proceed?
posted by alumshubby on Aug 25, 2005 - 71 comments

You are where you live. (Click "Zip Code Lookup" in lower right.)
posted by rafter on Dec 12, 2004 - 52 comments

Adults are picking up instant messaging in record numbers, with 50% of those over 35 using various systems. This study was funded by AOL, which has a major stake in the instant messaging market through its popular AIM software. But most people who use IM in the workplace are still using free and unsecured systems, despite the availability of secure versions in enterprise software and products like IM Secure.
posted by etoile on Sep 2, 2004 - 8 comments

The Empty Cradle. Our everyday personal experiences with traffic, sprawl and other irritants of modern life tell us there are too many people in the world and the problem is getting worse. However in truth world population growth peaked 40 years ago in 1963 and has been trending downward since. Demographers predict that absolute human population will peak at 9 billion by 2070 and then contract. Long before then, many nations will shrink in absolute size and the average age of the world's citizens will shoot up dramatically, including the fastest aging part of the world: developing countries, where for example Iraq is aging 2.5 times faster than the USA and Mexico 5 times as fast. Having averted the danger of overpopulation, the world now faces the opposite problem: an aging and declining population.
posted by stbalbach on Jun 6, 2004 - 28 comments

Where do you live, among a bastion of geeks, or sea of academia-phobes? US Census released the smartest cities, states, and counties with Seattle and Raleigh topping the cities. Also for those who are politically curious, of the top 15 states with Bachelor degrees 11 went to Gore, while 13 of the bottom 15 went to Bush.
posted by humbe on May 14, 2004 - 27 comments

Demography is destiny Alan Greespan in Senate testimony discusses the implications of an aging population. While the US is getting older, other countries are relatively young. Can immigration and technology provide, as Greenspan says, a "potent antidote for slowing growth in the working-age population," or are such projections academic?
posted by kliuless on Feb 27, 2003 - 5 comments

Front-line troops disproportionately white, not black. While blacks are 20% of the military -- compared with 12% of the U.S. population -- they make up a far smaller percentage of troops in combat jobs on the front line. In a host of high-risk slots -- from Army commandos to Navy and Air Force fighter pilots -- blacks constitute less than 5% of the force, statistics show. Blacks, especially in the enlisted ranks, tend to be disproportionately drawn to non-combat fields such as unit administration and communications. ''If anybody should be complaining about battlefield deaths, it is poor, rural whites,'' says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University in Illinois.
posted by dagny on Jan 22, 2003 - 48 comments

Half a billion Americans? The Economist crunches census data from both sides of the Atlantic and figures that the US will hit the 500 million mark sometime in the next few decades, surpassing the combined population of even the expanded EU. In typical style, the Economist looks at the economic and political reprecussions of this, but skips another interesting question: how will a doubling of the population change America itself? will it make the US more environmentally friendly? reduce urban sprawl? will the shifting population balance change the culture itself?
posted by costas on Aug 23, 2002 - 48 comments

Demograhics weighed. More flavor into the melting pot, or more strife as another ethnicity to claim the turf for themselves?
posted by semmi on Aug 15, 2002 - 3 comments

Getting the Girl. The NY Times Magazine ran a great article awhile back on the emotional and societal consequences of being able to choose the sex of your baby. In the US, the ratio for the overall population is 0.96 males for every 1 female. But it has been changing over time and there's some controversy as to why this is.
posted by euphorb on Apr 11, 2002 - 10 comments

There sure are a lot of us. Not to mention that there have been a lot of us. You might be surprised how many. We all know about the increasing world population, but it's interesting to compare the total, current, and past numbers; seeing 'em tick by like that reinforces it in a way that static numbers can't. My, how we've grown.
posted by e^2 on Oct 21, 2001 - 10 comments

"My name is John Johnson, I come from Wisconsin..." Find out the historical distribution of your last name throughout the U.S. (This will not, alas, be useful for Mr. Johnson, or the Smiths, Joneses, Williamses, and Browns of the world.) Brits, we haven't forgotten you! Of course, if you're doing genealogical research, you can turn to specific resources, like the US Census or the massive Familysearch.
posted by snarkout on Sep 10, 2001 - 15 comments

Say farewell to the geeky white guys. The new generation of Internet users looks a lot like the folks who cruise Wal-Mart-and then some. How the hell did that happen?
posted by thirteen on Mar 20, 2001 - 54 comments

U.S. population up 13% from 1990 to 281 million. Power shifts South in the House. Yikes!
posted by quirked on Dec 28, 2000 - 15 comments

a newly released u.n. population study suggests that because the birth rates in wealthy countries is low and declining, the worker-retired ratio will not be able to support current social programs. "The report found that Japan would need 10 million immigrants every year for the next 50 years to maintain the current working-age to retirement-age ratio. Without migration, figures show it would be necessary to raise the retirement age to 77 to maintain the ratio."
posted by palegirl on Mar 21, 2000 - 8 comments