New City Population Estimates Released Next Week

Wondering what the population of Hardinsburg or Paducah is? Or any other city in Kentucky? How many folks live in your old Kentucky hometown these days?

Next week (on Wednesday, July 1) population estimates of the nation’s incorporated places — cities, towns, villages and boroughs — is scheduled for public release. These will be estimates of how many people lived in the towns on July 1 of last year.

The new estimates will be available at the KSDC web site. You can find these data and much more Kentucky Information there.

Addressing the 2010 Census

The 2010 Census is about ten months away (April 1, 2010) but preparation has been ongoing for years. One of the most critical aspects of counting everyone in the United States is to locate all housing units. To do this, the Census Bureau updates its Master Address File several ways. In Kentucky, as in all states, local and state governments help do this by reviewing addresses in their jurisdictions and participating in the Local Update of Census Addresses. Additionally, from March 2009 until mid-July 2009, the Bureau is employing 140,000 workers whose goal is to locate and verify every residential address in the country, all 145 million of them. This is obviously a huge undertaking, and this year the workers are using GPS devices to improve their data collection.

“A complete and accurate address list is the cornerstone of a successful census,” said Tom Mesenbourg, acting director of the U.S. Census Bureau. “Building on the achievements of the 2000 Census, we have been testing and preparing for the 2010 count all decade, and we’re ready to fulfill our constitutional mandate to count everyone living in the United States . . .
The primary goal of the census is to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place”

There is a slick two-page PDF summary about the Address Canvasing you can read at this link.
So now that you have read this, don't be too surprised if a canvasser knocks on your door to verify the address and find out if you added a mother-in-law suite above your garage. Mother-in-laws need to be counted too, after all.

Why is Census Data in the news so often?

Census data is frequently in the news because the Census Bureau releases analyses, reports and new data several times a month. These releases often prompt news stories or commentary because they generally describe changing demographics in certain regions of the country or among various population groups. The next time you see one of these news reports you can go to this link to the Census Bureau Press Releases page to find the press releases which have links to the source data. While these frequent releases are usually limited to analysis of larger geographies, such as regions, states or MSAs, sometimes county and city level data is available.

The Bureau releases are a true mixed bag, so you can read about how the Guam economy grew at 36%, or read some highlights from the new State and County 2008 population estimates released on May 14, 2009. The latter report tells us that:

• There is a greater than 13-year difference in the median ages of the state with the highest median age (Maine at 42) and the one with the lowest (Utah at 28.7). Kentucky's median age was 37.7.


• There are only 11 states where men make up the majority of the population. Alaska has the highest percentage of men at 52.1 percent. Following Alaska are Nevada (50.9 percent), Wyoming (50.7 percent), Utah (50.5 percent) and Colorado (50.4 percent). In Kentucky, males were only 48.9 percent of the total population.
  

Not all of the releases are the usual suspect demographics like race, eduation and poverty status. Just today, the Bureau released a report about how Internet usage has tripled from 1997 to 2007. By visiting this Bureau site you can now know the story behind the news story. I will put a link to the Press Releases page in the sidebar for quick access to this site in the future.