Archive for the ‘Census & Demographics’ Category

Blacks three times more likely to be stopped in Toronto

Race Matters, a series by The Toronto Star, investigated why blacks are three times more likely than white to be stopped and questioned by police. “In each of the city’s 74 police patrol zones, the Star analysis shows that blacks were documented at significantly higher rates than their overall census population by zone, and that in many zones, the same holds true for “brown” people — mainly people of South Asian, Arab and West Asian backgrounds.”

Fighting New Jersey’s Tax Crush series

A Gannett New Jersey 8-day investigation looks at New Jersey’s property taxes which are the highest in the nation. Using tax information and census data, the series looks at the trends, disparities and impact of such high taxes.

Military service embodies “warrior tradition” for some

Analysis of Department of Defense records by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that Wisconsin’s Menominee County “provided more soldiers to the Army over the last four years than any other county in the nation without a major Army installation.

No-proof loans fuel foreclosure problems

Dale Kasler, Phillip Reese and Jim Wasserman of The Sacramento Bee examined the impact of stated-income loans in the wave of subprime loans devastating the area’s housing market. Analysis of “61,000 Sacramento-area mortgages over two years reveals striking discrepancies — gaps as high as 25 percent — between what homebuyers earned and what was listed [...]

Paychecks shrinking when inflation considered

David Knox of the Akron Beacon Journal takes an in-depth look at eroding income levels. The Beacon Journal examined more than 50 years of census data to consider “ what happens when older workers retire, exchanging their big paychecks for smaller Social Security and pension checks? The logical answer is that they would be replaced [...]

Migration patterns mapped

The Charlotte Observer and charlotte.com published stories and interactive maps that show county-to-county migration in North Carolina and across the U.S. The report highlighted the trend of upstate New Yorkers moving to the Charlotte region. An accompanying map is based on the most recent five years of IRS county migration data. Click on any [...]

Charlotte Observer investigation: Housing the Poor

Fred Kelly of the Charlotte Observer used local data to show that roughly four of every five Section 8 residents are clustered in 10 ZIP codes already burdened with crime and blight. At the same time, affluent communities, including vast stretches of south Charlotte and areas near Lake Norman, have virtually no Section 8 tenants.”

People move closer to National Parks

Frank Bass of The Associated Press analyzed Census data to show that “more than 1.3 million people since 1990 have moved into counties surrounding six of the best-loved parks: Gettysburg, Everglades, Glacier, Yellowstone, Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains. The average number of people per square mile in those counties has grown by one-third. The four [...]

People with lower incomes risk more on lottery

Adam Bell and Jim Morrill of The Charlotte Observer
analyzed four years of data from the South Carolina lottery to show that people with lower incomes spend a greater portion of their income on lottery games than more affluent players. The investigation found people earning less than $30,000 a year spent an estimated $627 per [...]

Vulnerable live in Sacramento’s flood zones

Phillip Reese of The Sacramento Bee used Census data and maps to report that “more than 150,000 of Sacramento County’s most vulnerable residents — the elderly, the poor and the disabled — live in areas prone to substantial flooding, and local officials acknowledge they don’t know whether they could quickly get them to safe ground.” [...]