CensusScope: graphical and tabular display of US Census 2000 data

August 18, 2006 4:01 AM

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 (7 comments total)

Lots to think about here. Not surprising that Mississippi has a high rate of adults without high school diplomas, but I didn't expect Wyoming and Alaska to do better than Massachusetts in that regard. Not surprising that a lot of oldsters wind up in Florida, but why are there also a lot of old folks in a band, right down the center of the country? The center of the nation is leaking people. If you want to know why southern states are net gainers of federal tax dollars, and northern states net losers, look no further. Poke around. What interesting patterns can you find?

posted by Slithy_Tove at 4:03 AM on August 18, 2006

Slithy, I believe the emptying out of middle America and the concentration of older people are directly related. The people leaving the areas in the plains states tend to be the young and mobile leaving behind a greater concentration of older people. A lot of the towns in the Dakotas have an average age of 50+ these days.
posted by Helix80 at 4:43 AM on August 18, 2006

Why did people move out of northern California in the 90s?
posted by kimota at 5:04 AM on August 18, 2006

Also, West Virginia has a lot of industrial diversity, which I would take to mean that it should be economically buffered; why then has it been historically so impoverished? Is that diversity relatively recent?

I also found the correlation between high poverty locales and places where grandparents were the primary caregivers to be intriguing.
posted by kimota at 5:16 AM on August 18, 2006

Living in MD I can tell you why WV is impoverished - it's a shit hole except for the natural resources that are untouched by man. Bears and trees don't make money.
posted by evilelvis at 5:43 AM on August 18, 2006

Why did people move out of northern California in the 90s?

The only part that shows any possible decrease is the far upper-northeast, which is very rural--Modoc, Trinity, and Siskiyou counties. The rest of northern California showed moderate increases, since it's already a fairly well-populated area. Unfortunately, that map is poorly done: a choropleth should never have a category (like the orange one in this case) that spans across the zero line. It's meaningless.
posted by kittyprecious at 6:38 AM on August 18, 2006

Also, West Virginia has a lot of industrial diversity, which I would take to mean that it should be economically buffered; why then has it been historically so impoverished?

Internal colonialism.
posted by eatitlive at 7:55 AM on August 18, 2006