LINKS:  to Weston, CT Population and Housing Census 2000 data within this website and beyond...
Link to Department of Commerce, which houses the Census operation...

H O T    L I N K S . . .
U.S. CENSUS 2010:  For this and other census counts in the future...THE SHORT FORM HERE


ROBERT M. GROVES, NEWLY APPOINTED DIRECTOR
Dr. Groves is the Director of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, a consortium of the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, and Westat.  He is also a Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, and a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research.  He was Associate Director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1990-1992, on loan from the University of Michigan.  He is the author of Survey Errors and Survey Costs (Wiley, 1989), and co-author of Surveys by Telephone (Academic Press, 1979); Nonresponse in Household Interview Surveys (Wiley, 1998): chief editor of Telephone Survey Methodology (Wiley, 1988), and co-editor of Measurement Errors in Surveys (Wiley, 1991), as well as many articles in survey and statistical methodology.

From the horses mouth...2010 Census Timeline: Key Dates:


NEW CANDIDATE FOR COMMERCE SECRETARY:  Former Governor Gary Locke (r.) of Washington State.  How is the Census discussion related to everything else - and to politics?


Caribbeans urged to write in ancestry on US Census
YAHOO
By JENNIFER KAY, Associated Press Writer
Wed Feb 24, 12:02 pm ET

MIAMI – Identify yourself as being of "Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin" on the 2010 U.S. Census questionnaire, and you will get to be more specific about your ancestry, such as Mexican-American, Cuban or Puerto Rican.

But check the box for "black, African-American or Negro" and there will be no place to show whether you trace your identity to the African continent, a Caribbean island or a pre-Civil War plantation.

Some Caribbean-American leaders are urging their communities to write their nationalities on the line under "some other race" on the forms arriving in mailboxes next month, along with checking the racial categories they feel identify them best.

It's another step in the evolution of the Census, which has moved well beyond general categories like "black" and "white" to allow people to identify themselves as multi-racial, and, in some cases, by national origin.

The wording of the questions for race and ethnicity changes with almost every Census, making room for the people who say, "I don't see how I fit in exactly," Census Bureau director Robert Groves told reporters in December. "This will always keep changing in this country as it becomes more and more diverse."

In another push tied to the 2010 Census, advocates are urging indigenous immigrants from Mexico and Central America to write in groups such as Maya, Nahua or Mixtec so the Census Bureau can tally them for the first time.

The campaign in the multiethnic Caribbean community reflects a tendency, born from multiple waves of migration, to establish identity first by country, then by race.

"We are completely undercounted because there isn't an accurate way of self-identifying for people from the Caribbean," said Felicia Persaud, chairwoman of CaribID 2010, a New York-based campaign to get a category on the census form for Caribbean-Americans or West Indians.

About 2.4 percent of the U.S. population — more than 6.8 million people — identified on the 2000 Census as belonging to two or more races. A little less than 1 percent of the population — more than 1.8 million people — wrote in their West Indian ancestry.

And about 874,000 people — or 0.3 percent of the population — ticked boxes for Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders that year. If those islanders could get their own categories on the form, Caribbean-American leaders say, why not their communities?

Their lobbying efforts led to a bill in Congress requiring a box to indicate Caribbean descent on the census form, but it did not pass.

"We've really pushed so we can tell our story in numbers the way the Latino community has done by getting the origin category on the form," Persaud said.

Accurate counts in the once-a-decade survey ensure recognition from the federal government and the fair allocation of resources to state and local governments, advocates say.

While most Caribbeans are expected to at least check the box for "black," lumping them together with all African-Americans means corporations and politicians won't see the political, economic and social issues specific to their immigrant communities, Persaud said. They also won't see the size of those communities or get a sense of the diversity of experiences among Afro-Caribbean groups.

Persaud plans to check the "some other race" category and write in her nationality, Guyanese. Her father is Asian Indian, and her mother is black and Asian Indian, but she doesn't feel those categories reflect her blended Caribbean identity.

"We've always been able to say we're a mix, and then you come to this country and you're not sure where you're fitting under, so I figured that we're 'other,'" Persaud said. "That's how everybody feels."

Jean-Robert LaFortune also said the categories don't feel quite right. As he has on previous census forms, the chairman of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition in Miami will identify himself as black and as a Latino of Haitian ancestry, and he will write Haitian under "some other race."

Checking so many boxes doesn't mean he's confused. He considers identity in a regional sense: to him, Latino denotes anyone from a Latin American country. He said the Latin roots of French and Haiti's predominantly Roman Catholic religion bind his homeland to a community defined in the U.S. mostly by the Spanish language.

"As you can see, it will not be an easy task for the Haitian to fill properly the census form," LaFortune wrote in an e-mail.

The concept of identity can change over generations. LaFortune concedes that while some Haiti-born U.S. residents identify with Latinos, younger U.S.-born Haitians have grown up with a different understanding of what it means to be Latino.

A generation gap likely explains why 56,000 people wrote in "Negro" on the 2000 form, enough to prompt Census officials to include the word alongside "black" and "African-American" in 2010, said Florida-based Census spokeswoman Pam Bellis.

Efforts to push the federal government to recognize specific communities have grown since the 1960s, when residents began filling out the forms on their own, said Ann Morning, a sociology professor at New York University.

The Census Bureau first included the option "of Spanish heritage" in 1970, then added the term "Hispanic" a decade later. Before 2000, Native Hawaiians were counted as American Indians. That Census also was the first to offer the option of identifying with more than one race.

Now there's more recognition of diversity within the black community, Morning said.

"For so long, black meant a particular kind of ethnic identity — a native-born descendent of slaves who had been in the South generations ago," she said. "Now people are increasingly realizing there are other kinds of African descent."

Census begins count in Noorvik
Anchorage Daily News
By RACHEL D'ORO, The Associated Press
Published: January 23rd, 2010 08:40 PM
Last Modified: January 23rd, 2010 08:41 PM

The U.S. Census Bureau chief is heading to Alaska to formally launch the nation's 2010 count in a remote Inupiat Eskimo village, where residents are planning a huge reception of traditional dancing and a feast of caribou, moose and other subsistence foods.

Bureau Director Robert Groves is scheduled to count the first household in Noorvik at 1 p.m. Monday, after arriving by charter plane at the village not linked by roads to anywhere else. Villagers say the first to be counted will be Clifton Jackson, a World War II veteran and the oldest resident in the community of 650.

But first Groves and other census officials will be greeted by eagerly awaiting residents. For the visitors' sake, locals hope the weather is kinder than the brutal minus-40 temperatures already recorded this month in Noorvik, located north of the Arctic Circle near Alaska's western coast.

Sled dog teams driven by schoolchildren will greet the visitors and ferry them to the school, where festivities will continue into the night after the first enumeration is completed. An Inupiat fashion show, a short film on Noorvik and dancing by school children, other locals and groups from other villages are among the planned events.

"We've been organizing this as a community, all planning for this together," said Noorvik Mayor Bobby Wells. "Monday is a big day."

Monday's single count will be the only one conducted by Groves, and the rest of Noorvik's population will be enumerated beginning Tuesday. Census workers and trained locals are expected to take a week to interview villagers from the same 10-question forms to be mailed to most residents March 15. Census workers also will visit 217 other rural communities, all in Alaska, in the coming weeks.


Census Bureau kicks off once-a-decade head count
YAHOO
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer
January 4, 2010

WASHINGTON – The Census Bureau kicks off its $300 million campaign Monday to prod, coax and cajole the nation's more than 300 million residents to fill out their once-a-decade census forms.  The bureau will mail out the 10-question forms to about 120 million households in March.  On Monday, Census Director Robert Groves starts the nationwide campaign with an event in New York City where he is scheduled to unveil a 46-foot trailer called "Mail It Back." In all, 13 vehicles are to be present at about 800 events around the country, from small community happenings to the Super Bowl and the NCAA Final Four.

"The whole purpose is to reach out to people at local events," Groves said.

Residents can expect to receive letters in early March notifying them that census forms will arrive between March 15-17. Residents who don't respond will get a follow-up postcard. Those who still don't respond can expect a visit from a census taker by early May.  In 2000, about 67 percent of households mailed back their forms, ending a three decade decline in the response rate. Follow-up visits are expensive. For every percentage point decrease in the response rate, the Census Bureau says it costs an additional $85 million to find and count those people.

The Constitution requires the head count every 10 years to draw congressional districts and to dole out Electoral College votes to the states. Congress uses the count to distribute more than $400 billion each year in federal aid to state, local and tribal governments.

Census data is used by government agencies and private companies alike, to locate pools of skilled workers, determine where schools and hospitals should be placed and to trace victims of natural disasters. In the Gulf Coast region, this year's census will provide the most accurate measure to date of how Hurricanes Katrina and Rita affected population trends.

"There's political power involved because of the Constitution," Groves said. "There's money involved as well."

The 10-question form is one of the shortest in the history of the census. Residents will be asked the number of people living in each household as well as their age, race and whether they own their home or rent. Other questions — on income, education levels and other characteristics — are addressed in the annual American Community Survey, which has been phased in over much of the past decade.

The Census Bureau faces special challenges locating residents because of the high number of foreclosures, as well as immigrants wary of government workers amid a crackdown on illegal immigration. Census officials emphasize that responses are confidential by law, meaning they cannot be shared with other federal agencies or law enforcement. Under the Constitution, the government is required to count everyone, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status.

Advocates have urged the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, to improve outreach to minority communities, which are typically undercounted.  This year, about 13 million forms in both English and Spanish will be sent to areas with high concentrations of people who speak Spanish. Residents can also request forms in Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Russian.

"I don't think you can ever do enough," Groves said. "What we are doing, I think, is something to be proud of."

In 2000, the Census Bureau noted for the first time an overcount of 1.3 million people, mostly from duplicate counts of more affluent whites with multiple homes. About 4.5 million people were ultimately missed, mostly blacks and Hispanics.

Connecticut's Population Continues To Creep Upward
The Hartford Courant
7:15 AM EST, December 23, 2009

The state's population increased by about 15,000 people -- a mere 0.4 percent -- in the last year, to about 3,518,000, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Connecticut remains the 29th most populous state, the same ranking it held in 2008 and in the 2000 census.

Connecticut is still among the slowest-growing states, ranking 41st in percentage change since 2008 and since 2000. In the past 9 years, the state's population has grown by about 113,000 residents, according to the estimates.

But among New England states, Connecticut had relatively healthy population growth. Massachusetts saw a 0.8 percent population increase in the last year, ranked 26th in the nation. New Hampshire's population was up 0.2 percent, and Vermont grew 0.1 percent. But Rhode Island's population stayed almost exactly the same as in 2008, and Maine lost about 1,400 residents, a drop of 0.1 percent. Maine and Michigan were the only states to lose population in the last year, according to the estimates.

Wyoming, Utah, Texas and Colorado saw the largest percentage increases in population in the last year, according to the estimates. Michigan, which lost nearly 33,000 residents, had the lowest growth.

-- Stephen Busemeyer

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant


Recession Cuts Migration to Sun Belt, New Figures Show
NYTIMES
By DAMIEN CAVE
December 24, 2009

MIAMI — The Sun Belt states that grew like fertilized weeds during the real estate boom are now experiencing sharp declines in population growth, the Census Bureau said Wednesday.

Those states are still projected to gain seats in Congress after the 2010 census, while industrial states in the Northeast are likely to lose seats.

But in yet another sign of the recession’s power to reshape established demographic trends, the new figures show that as of July, growth has slowed to a trickle in Arizona, while in Florida, Nevada and California, more Americans moved out than in.

“What we have is a decade of a roller coaster in terms of migration,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “If you look at the middle part of this decade, Florida led the country in net domestic migration. Now it’s in the negative part of the ledger.”

The shift is especially vivid in state rankings prepared by Mr. Frey. With the new numbers, his analysis shows, Florida now ranks 45th in domestic migration growth after ranking first from July of 2001 to July 2005. It lost 31,179 people to other states from July 2008 to July 2009.

In terms of its total growth rate with foreign arrivals included, Florida now ranks 32nd, down from third in 2002.

Similarly, Nevada has fallen to 17th on the total growth-rate list, after leading the country from 2000 to 2004. It now ranks 38th in domestic migration, losing 3,801 people after adding more than 170,000 from other states from July 2003 to July 2006.

Arizona dropped to eighth in overall growth rate, from first three years ago.

As a corollary, the census figures also show that several states in the Northeast — including Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey — are holding on to more residents. California is experiencing less movement out as well: about 98,000 people left the state as of July, down from 313,000 three years ago.

These shifts, however, do not appear to have dramatically offset the broader trends of the decade, characterized by moves to the South and the West. The new population figures are the last to be released before the 2010 census, and if these conclusions hold, these regions would gain more representation in Congress.

Texas, it seems, is the big winner. It added more people from home and abroad than any other state this year — 231,539. That is more than Florida, Arizona, California, Nevada and Colorado, combined.

Mr. Frey attributed this to a more diversified economy in Texas, and more conservative lending practices during the real estate boom. When combined with the state’s steady growth earlier in the decade, Texas is projected to receive three new seats in Congress, bringing its total to 35.

Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington would gain one seat each, according to an analysis of the figures by Andrew A. Beveridge, a Queens College demographer.

States that would lose a seat include Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Ohio would lose two, leaving it with 16.

With former industrial states losing seats and states that had been growing gaining, Dr. Beveridge said the new totals pointed to a simple lesson: “The economy trumps everything.”



Census: What America will look like in 2010

By MAUREEN CALLAHAN
Last Updated: 4:29 AM, October 25, 2009
Posted: 12:18 AM, October 25, 2009

To some, the decennial census will always be the Man coming to get you. To Peter Francese, the US census is the greatest resource to country and corporations, a nearly novelistic depiction of the state and shape of the nation. He also uses it to predict the future.“The census does surveys every year that no private company could ever match,” says Francese, a demographic trends analyst at Oglivy & Mather who has been projecting future trends off the census since 1970. He is also the author of The White Paper, an in-depth depiction of what the 2010 US census will show — in other words, what the country will look and feel like next year. (It’s used by many in the ad industry and is available to anyone willing to pay $249.) “There are huge, huge implications to demographic changes, because there is a story behind every number.” Francese says that 2010 will see four major, emergent trends:

* First: What he calls “The Grandparent Economy.” This, Francese says, is the most fascinating development in recent memory, the morphing of America into a multi-generational society in which grandparents, their adult children, and their children’s children are all living in the same house, with the grandparents offering both economic and emotional support.

“I forecasted that by 2010 there would be very close to 70 million grandparents in this country,” he says. “There were 47 million in 1990 — that’s a huge leap. It grew five times faster than the population as a whole.” The recession is most responsible; the unemployment rate is highest among those 20-24 at 15.2%, and, at 6.9%, lowest among those 55-64.

This coincides with a staggering increase in births to single mothers; today, one in four children is born to an unmarried woman. And, as Francese puts it, “Who needs the help of grandparents more than a single mom?” The upshot, he says, is that Americans 50 years and older control the vast majority of assets and show the most economic growth; he thinks advertising dollars should shift from the current 10% spent on that demographic to 40%.

* Francese’s second most interesting finding is what he calls “the absolute rocketing ascendancy of women in America.” He predicts that, within six months to a year, women will comprise the majority of the workforce. A 2009 report by the Census Bureau showed that, for the first time ever, more women had graduated college than men, and Franscese sees that trend continuing. The dominance of women is also related to the recession; the two hardest-hit industries, construction and manufacturing, are male-dominated, while the least-hit, education and health care, are favored by women.

As for the economy, Francese predicts this Christmas will show a small but enouraging spike in consumer spending, with the recession ending in real estate in spring, construction in summer. “This recession will end differentially, and it will take longer because it’s national.” He predicts the earliest bounce-back in Texas and Florida, two states with young populations and thriving industries. (New York is tied with three other states as the 16th oldest in the nation; take that as you will.)

* Third: Though the nation’s dominant ethnicity remains white non-Hispanic (at 200 million), we have, Francese says, “truly become a multicultural nation,” and are on our way to becoming a minority-majority nation, probably within the next 40-50 years. “The fastest growing segment is the Hispanic population; since 2000 it’s jumped 42% nationwide, while white non-Hispanic has edged up 2%,” he says. “Virtually all the growth is with all other ethnicities [except white].”

* And fourth: The Midwest and Northeast are hemorrhaging jobs and residents, while the South and the West have seen a huge uptick in residents (and, California aside, are doing better economically).

“This migration pattern is truly breathtaking; it’s not just immigration,” he says. “The number one reason anyone moves is a job. There’s more job creation in the South and the West; manufacturing has gone South. It’s cheaper. Taxes are lower; there’s less unionization. New York laws tend to favor the employee over the employer.” A damaging side-effect: the migration of young workers who relocate their families mean that the left-behind states get older and older, and economic growth slows.



Number Of Hartford Area People Living In Poverty Increases
The Hartford Courant
By MARK SPENCER
September 30, 2009

The poverty rate, particularly for children, increased faster in Connecticut than in any other state in 2008, according to figures released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.  The grim numbers prompted child advocates to call for more aggressive action by the state to help poor families. The statistics also heightened concern about the future because they portray only the leading edge of the recession, which grew more severe early this year.

"We're seeing the effect of the first half of the recession, and it's quite dramatic," said Joachim Hero, a research associate with Connecticut Voices for Children who analyzed the numbers.

While Connecticut's poverty rate is still well below the national average, the number of state residents living in poverty increased from 7.9 percent in 2007 to 9.3 percent in 2008. Nationally, the poverty rate jumped to 13.2 percent, an 11-year high.  The number of children under 18 below the poverty level increased from 11.1 percent to 12.5 percent during the same period. The national rate in 2008 was 18.2 percent.  It was sobering news for a state that in 2004 set a goal of cutting child poverty in half by 2014. The rate at the time was 10.8 percent, and Hero said little progress was made on the initiative even before the onset of recession.

"We're moving further and further away from our goal," he said.

The picture is even worse for the state's urban centers.  The number of individuals in the Hartford metropolitan area living in poverty increased from 31.2 percent in 2007 to 33.5 percent last year.  The number of families below the poverty level in Hartford, West Hartford and East Hartford — the metropolitan area used by the Census Bureau — also increased, going from 29.4 percent in 2007 to 30.4 percent in 2008.  The statistics come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, a snapshot of conditions and trends based on interviews with 3 million households nationally.

Analysts said it was unclear why Connecticut's poverty rate increased so rapidly, but speculated that the state may have been hit harder than others by the Wall Street collapse.

The figures confirm what social service agencies that serve the poor say they see every day. Nancy Pappas, director of external affairs for the anti-poverty group Community Renewal Team, said 32 percent of the 33,000 household that received energy assistance between August 2008 and April 2009 had not applied in the previous two years.  The number of families turned away from the organization's East Hartford Community Shelter because it was full nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008, Pappas said.

Ann Foley, a senior policy adviser with the state Office of Policy and Management, said that she was concerned about the trend, but that many of the state's efforts to fight poverty don't show up in the census numbers. For instance, she said, the poverty rate is based on income, alone, while subsidies for health care, child care, rent and other assistance the state provides help mitigate the problem.  David Dearborn, spokesman for the state Department of Social Services, said the HUSKY A program, which provides Medicaid coverage for children and eligible parents, grew from 330,381 people in October 2008 to 350,708 people in September 2009.

On Tuesday at the state Capitol, the Speaker's Task Force on Children and the Recession held its first meeting with the goal of preparing legislative recommendations for next session.  Some advocates want measures such as a state earned-income tax credit adopted, which they say would have an immediate impact on poverty.  But it also would reduce state revenue, a tough prospect with increasingly tight budgets.

State Rep. Diana Urban, D-North Stonington, co-chairwoman of the task force, said it will study low-cost and efficient anti-poverty programs, but if the crisis deepens the state may need to consider more immediate and expensive measures.

"We're not just talking about money," Urban said. "We're talking about children's lives."

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant

US income gap widens as poor take hit in recession
YAHOO
Published on 9/29/2009

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The recession has hit middle-income and poor families hardest, widening the economic gap between the richest and poorest Americans as rippling job layoffs ravaged household budgets.

The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans - those making more than $138,000 each year - earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by those living near or below the poverty line in 2008, according to newly released census figures. That ratio was an increase from 11.2 in 2007 and the previous high of 11.22 in 2003.

Household income declined across all groups, but at sharper percentage levels for middle-income and poor Americans. Median income fell last year from $52,163 to $50,303, wiping out a decade's worth of gains to hit the lowest level since 1997.

Poverty jumped sharply to 13.2 percent, an 11-year high.

"No one should be surprised at the increased disparity," said Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University. "Unemployment hurts normal workers who do not have the golden parachutes the folks at the top have."

Analysts attributed the widening gap to the wave of layoffs in the economic downturn that have devastated household budgets. They said while the richest Americans may be seeing reductions in executive pay, those at the bottom of the income ladder are often unemployed and struggling to get by.

Large cities such as Atlanta, Washington, New York, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago had the most inequality, due largely to years of middle-class flight to the suburbs. Declining industrial cities with pockets of well-off neighborhoods, such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Buffalo, N.Y., also had sharp disparities.

Up-and-coming cities with growing middle-class populations, such as Mesa, Ariz., Riverside, Calif., Arlington, Texas, and Henderson, Nev., were among the areas showing the least income differences between rich and poor.

It's unclear whether income inequality will continue to worsen in major cities, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. Many Americans are staying put for now in traditional cities to look for jobs and because of frozen lines of credit.

"During the years of the housing bubble, there was middle-class movement from unaffordable metros with high-income inequality," Frey said. "Now that the bubble burst, more of the population may be headed back to the high-inequality areas, stemming their middle-class losses."

Among other findings:

_Income at the top 5 percent of households _ those making $180,000 or more _ was 3.58 times the median income, the highest since 2006.

_Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia had higher poverty rates than the national average, many of them in the South, such as Mississippi (21.2 percent), Kentucky, Arkansas and Louisiana (each with 17.3 percent). That's compared with 19 states and the District of Columbia that ranked above U.S. poverty in 2007.

_Use of food stamps jumped 13 percent last year to nearly 9.8 million U.S. households, led by Louisiana, Maine and Kentucky. The increase was most evident in households with two or more workers, highlighting the impact of the recession on both working families and unemployed single people.

_Pharr, Texas, and Flint, Mich., each had more than a third of its residents on food stamps, at 38.5 percent and 35.4 percent, respectively.

_Between 2007 and 2008, income at the 50th percentile (median) and the 10th percentile fell by 3.6 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively, compared with a 2.1 percent decline at the 90th percentile. Between 1999 and 2008, income at the 50th and 10th percentiles decreased 4.3 percent and 9 percent, respectively, while income at the 90th percentile was statistically unchanged.

_Plano, Texas, a Dallas suburb, had the highest median income among larger cities, earning $85,003. Cleveland ranked at the bottom, at $26,731.

The findings come as the federal government considers new regulations to rein in executive pay at companies in which it has invested. President Barack Obama also typically cites the need for higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for health care overhaul and other measures, arguing that the wealthy have disproportionately benefited from tax cuts during the Bush administration.

The 2008 figures come from the Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey, which gathers information from 3 million households. The government first began tracking household income in 1967.

Hanged census worker found naked
Washington Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, September 26, 2009

BIG CREEK, Ky. (AP) | A part-time census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape, said an Ohio man who discovered the body two weeks ago.

Authorities have also said the word "fed" was scrawled with a felt-tip pen across 51-year-old Bill Sparkman's chest, but they have released very few details about the case and said investigators have not determined whether it was a homicide. But a man who found the body said the scene looked like a homicide to him.

Federal, state and local authorities have refused to say whether Mr. Sparkman was at work going door-to-door for census surveys in the time before his death, but his U.S. Census Bureau identification tag was found taped to his body.

Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told the Associated Press on Friday that he was among a group of relatives who made the gruesome discovery on Sept. 12.

"The only thing he had on was a pair of socks," Mr. Weaver said. "And they had duct-taped his hands, his wrists. He had duct tape over his eyes, and they gagged him with a red rag or something."

"And they even had duct tape around his neck. And they had like his identification tag on his neck. They had it duct-taped to the side of his neck, on the right side, almost on his right shoulder."

Two people briefed on the investigation said various details of Mr. Weaver's account matched the details of the crime scene, though both people said they were not informed who found the body. The two spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

Mr. Weaver said he couldn't tell whether the tag was a Census Bureau ID because he didn't get close enough to read it. But both of the people briefed on the investigation confirmed Mr. Sparkman's Census Bureau ID was found taped to his head and shoulder area.

While authorities confirmed for the first time Thursday that asphyxiation was the cause of death, the details behind that were murky. According to a Kentucky State Police statement, the body was hanging from a tree with a noose around the neck, yet it was in contact with the ground.

Mr. Weaver said he was in town for a family reunion and was visiting family grave sites at the cemetery when he and family members including his wife and daughter came across the body.

The scene left Mr. Weaver without a doubt over how Mr. Sparkman died.

"He was murdered," he said. "There's no doubt."

Mr. Weaver said the body was about 50 yards from a 2003 Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck. He said Mr. Sparkman's clothes were in the bed of the truck.

The truck's "tailgate was down," Mr. Weaver said. "I thought he could have been killed somewhere else and brought there and hanged up for display, or they actually could have killed him right there. It was a bad, bad scene."

Clay County Sheriff Kevin Johnson declined to comment on the investigation because the department is only playing a supporting role, but he said patrols have increased in the Daniel Boone National Forest since the body was found.

The Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door interviews in the rural county pending the investigation.

Although anti-government sentiment was one possibility in the death, some in law enforcement also cited the prevalence of drug activity in the area -- including meth labs and marijuana fields -- although they had no reason to believe there was a link to Mr. Sparkman's death.

Census Bureau Drops Acorn From 2010 Effort
National Review
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 12, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Census Bureau on Friday severed its ties with Acorn, a community organization that Republicans have accused of voter-registration fraud.

“We do not come to this decision lightly,” the census director, Robert Groves, wrote in a letter to Acorn that was obtained by The Associated Press.

In splitting with Acorn, Mr. Groves sought to tamp down negative publicity that the partnership would taint the 2010 census.  Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is one of 80,000 groups of unpaid volunteers working with the bureau to raise awareness of the effort.

“It is clear that Acorn’s affiliation with the 2010 census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 census efforts,” Mr. Groves wrote.

Stephen Buckner, a bureau spokesman, confirmed the letter, but declined to comment further.  Scott Levenson, an Acorn spokesman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  Republicans had become increasingly critical of the bureau’s ties with Acorn.

Some members of the group, which conducted an extensive voter registration effort last year, were accused of submitting false registration forms with names like Mickey Mouse.  Acorn has said only a handful of employees submitted false forms and did so in a bid to increase their pay.


U.S. Births Hint at Bias for Boys in Some Asians
NYTIMES
By SAM ROBERTS
June 15, 2009

The trend is buried deep in United States census data: seemingly minute deviations in the proportion of boys and girls born to Americans of Chinese, Indian and Korean descent.

In those families, if the first child was a girl, it was more likely that a second child would be a boy, according to recent studies of census data. If the first two children were girls, it was even more likely that a third child would be male.

Demographers say the statistical deviation among Asian-American families is significant, and they believe it reflects not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion.

New immigrants typically transplant some of their customs and culture to the United States — from tastes in food and child-rearing practices to their emphasis on education and the elevated social and economic status of males. The appeal to immigrants by clinics specializing in sex selection caused some controversy a decade ago.

But a number of experts expressed surprise to see evidence that the preference for sons among Asian-Americans has been so significantly carried over to this country. “That this is going on in the United States — people were blown away by this,” said Prof. Lena Edlund of Columbia University.

She and her colleague Prof. Douglas Almond studied 2000 census data and published their results last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In general, more boys than girls are born in the United States, by a ratio of 1.05 to 1. But among American families of Chinese, Korean and Indian descent, the likelihood of having a boy increased to 1.17 to 1 if the first child was a girl, according to the Columbia economists. If the first two children were girls, the ratio for a third child was 1.51 to 1 — or about 50 percent greater — in favor of boys.

Studies have not detected a similar preference for males among Japanese-Americans.

The findings published by Professors Almond and Edlund were bolstered this year by the work of a University of Texas economist, Prof. Jason Abrevaya. He found that on the basis of census and birth records through 2004, the incidence of boys among immigrant Chinese parents in New York was higher than the national average for Chinese families. Boys typically account for about 515 of every 1,000 births. But he found that among Chinese New Yorkers having a third child, the number of boys was about 558.

Joyce Moy, executive director of the Asian American/Asian Research Institute of the City University of New York, said that family values prevalent in China, including the tradition of elder parents depending on their sons for support, have seeped into American culture even among younger immigrants, and even when some of the historic underlying reasons for the preference are less relevant here than in China, Korea and India.

“Inheritance in the old country is carried through the male line,” she said. “Families depend on the male child for support.”

Dr. Norbert Gleicher, medical director of the Center for Human Reproduction, a fertility and sex-selection clinic in New York and Chicago, said that from his experience, people were more inclined to want female children, except for Asians and Middle Easterners.

The preference for males among some immigrant Asians may fade with assimilation, experts said. And no one expects it to result in the lopsided male majorities like those in China, where, according to a study published this year in the British Medical Journal, the government’s one-child policy has resulted in the world’s highest sex disparity among newborns — about 120 boys for every 100 girls.

“The patients come in and they all think they owe me an excuse, but the bottom line is it’s cultural,” said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, medical director of the Fertility Institutes, a California clinic that began sex-selection procedures in New York in March.

The Fertility Institutes, which does not offer abortions, has unabashedly advertised its services in Indian- and Chinese-language newspapers in the United States.

“Culturally, there are a lot of strange things that go on in the world,” Dr. Steinberg said. “Whether we agree with it, it’s not harming anyone.”

Efforts by clinics to appeal to Indian families in the United States provoked criticism and some community introspection in 2001. Some newspapers and magazines that ran advertisements promoting the clinics, which offered sex-selection procedures, expressed regret at the perpetuation of what critics regard as a misogynistic practice.

In this country, some Asian families are having more than the two children they had planned for if the first two are girls. “I do have girlfriends who have had multiple children in anticipation there will ultimately be a boy,” Ms. Moy said.

Experts say that Asian-American families are using sex-selection techniques, also called family balancing.

In China, sex selection is usually achieved by aborting female fetuses, which doctors say also occurs in this country, although few parents were willing to be interviewed about it.

“It’s a real touchy thing,” Dr. Steinberg said. “It’s illegal in Asia, and culturally, it’s private.”

One New York couple, Angie and Rick, Chinese immigrants who were brought here by their parents as young children and now own several food markets in the city, agreed to be interviewed only if their last name was not used.

The first time Angie became pregnant and learned that the baby was a girl, she and her husband were merely disappointed. They had planned on having a second child anyway. When she learned she was pregnant with a girl again, though, the couple considered an abortion.

Their doctor argued against terminating the second pregnancy, they said. The couple reluctantly agreed to try for a third child.

“Our theory was that to raise kids, it’s tough already, so we didn’t want too many,” Rick recalled.

They explored various forms of sex selection, which could cost $15,000 or more, but they feared that because Angie was so fertile, the process would result in multiple births. She became pregnant a third time naturally. The couple were delighted to learn they were finally having a boy.

“If the third one was going to be a girl, then I would say probably I would have terminated,” Angie said.

A 1989 study of sex selection in New York City, conducted by Dr. Masood Khatamee, a clinical professor at N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center, found that all the foreign-born couples — mostly from Asia and the Middle East — preferred boys, predominantly for cultural and economic reasons. Often, the pressure comes from the husband’s parents.

“I have two daughters and am married to an only child,” said a Chinese-American professional woman who is married to an engineer. “Early on, after the two girls were born and another two years went by and there was not a third, I found myself in the living room with four or five older relatives in a discussion of ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely for you to have a boy?’ It’s extremely uncomfortable.”

Dr. Lisa Eng, a Hong Kong-born gynecologist who practices in Chinatown and Sunset Park, Brooklyn, said she tried to discourage couples who prefer boys from having abortions.

But, she said, “If it’s going to be a third, they’re pretty determined to have a boy. If it’s a boy, they keep it. If it’s a girl, they’ll abort.”



As Housing Market Dips, More in U.S. Are Staying Put
NYTIMES
By SAM ROBERTS
April 23, 2009

Fewer Americans moved in 2008 than in any year since 1962, according to census data released Wednesday, and immigration from overseas was the lowest in more than a decade.

The Census Bureau reported that the annual rate at which people moved dipped last year to 11.9 percent, compared with 13.2 percent in 2007 and a recent high of 20.2 percent in 1984-85. It was the lowest rate since the bureau began measuring mobility six decades ago.

The declines appeared to be directly related to the housing slump and the recession.

“It represents a perfect storm halting migration at all levels, since it involves deterrents in local housing-related moves and longer distance employment-related moves,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.

Moves from one state to another plunged the most, to half the rate recorded at the beginning of the decade. There were fewer total moves than in any year since 1949-50, when returning veterans and others streamed to the suburbs and the nation’s population was about half of what it is today.

“It does show that the U.S. population, often thought of as the most mobile in the developed world, seems to have been stopped dead in its tracks due to a confluence of constraints posed by a tough economic spell,” Dr. Frey said.

He predicted that the foreclosure crisis might spur more local mobility, within or between counties, as families are forced to rent or move in with relatives.

In 2008, the bureau said, 35.2 million people changed residences, compared with 38.7 million the year before.

People who moved were more likely to be unemployed, renters, poor and black. Those surveyed listed their reasons for moving as housing, family and job, in that order.

In all, 2.2 million people moved to the suburbs last year, while the major cities lost 2 million people.

The South recorded the largest net gain of people moving in, including a large influx of blacks. While the South also drew more children than any other region, it also lost more.

The Northeast lost the most residents of any region, as it has for years, but the West also registered a decline.


Obama Turns to Survey Researcher for Census Post
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:21 p.m. ET
April 2, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama on Thursday selected Robert M. Groves to be the next census director, turning to a survey researcher who has clashed with Republicans over the use of statistical sampling to lead the high-stakes head count.

The White House announced Obama's intention to nominate Groves, a former Census Bureau associate director of statistical design from 1990-92. If confirmed by the Senate, Groves will take the helm less than a year before the census, which has been beset by partisan bickering and will be used to apportion House seats and allocate billions in federal dollars.

Groves, 60, has spent decades researching ways to improve survey response rates, helping design surveys for agencies from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics to the EPA and National Institutes of Health.

''The decennial census faces significant challenges, but I am confident that Robert's leadership will help us meet those challenges,'' said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. ''He is a respected social scientist who will run the Census Bureau with integrity and independence.''

House Republicans expressed dismay over the selection of Groves, saying he raised serious questions about Obama's political intentions.

''We will have to watch closely to ensure the 2010 census is conducted without attempting ... statistical sleight of hand,'' said House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

When he was the bureau's associate director, Groves was among several officials who recommended the 1990 census be statistically adjusted to make up for an undercount of roughly 5 million people, many of them minorities in dense urban areas who tend to vote for Democrats.

But in a fierce political dispute that prompted White House staff to call advisers to the bureau and express opposition, the Census Bureau was overruled by Republican Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, who called the proposed statistical adjustment ''political tampering.''

The Supreme Court later ruled in 1999 that federal law barred the use of statistical sampling to apportion House seats. Justices, however, indicated that adjustments could be made to the population count when redrawing congressional boundaries.

Locke has made clear that sampling will not be used for apportionment. He stated during his confirmation hearing that there are no plans to use sampling for redistricting, while indicating that sampling could be used to measure census accuracy or collect a wider range of demographic data.

Census experts have said it would be difficult at this point to make plans for sampling in the 2010 census for congressional redistricting purposes since the count is only a year away. It is more likely that Groves could have an impact on statistical methods as part of long-term planning for census surveys after 2010.

Groves, a professor at the University of Michigan, would take over at a critical time. Census officials acknowledge that tens of millions of residents in dense urban areas -- about 14 percent of the U.S. population -- are at high risk of being missed because of language problems and a deepening economic crisis that has displaced homeowners.

The government is devoting up to $250 million of the $1 billion in stimulus money for outreach, particularly for traditionally hard-to-count minorities.

But Hispanics, blacks and other groups are warning that traditional census outreach will not be enough, citing in particular rising anti-immigration sentiment after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, praised Groves as a well-regarded academic, calling the question of statistical adjustment in the 2010 census a ''non-issue'' because there are no plans for it.

Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., who chairs a House subcommittee on the census, said Groves will be a strong and effective manager for the bureau. ''I look forward to working closely with him to reduce the undercount of minorities,'' said Clay, speaking also on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Republicans have been crying foul after the White House earlier this year indicated that it would take greater control over the census to address minority group concerns about Obama's initial nomination of GOP Sen. Judd Gregg as Commerce secretary.

Gregg later withdrew his nomination, partly citing disagreements over handling of the census. The White House has since made clear that Locke will make the final decisions regarding the 2010 head count.

Democrats and Republicans for years have disagreed on whether the census should be based on a strict head count or cross-checked against a ''statistical adjustment'' to include hard-to-track people, particularly minorities, who might have been missed.

Meanwhile, the cost of the 2010 census is estimated to be $15 billion, the most expensive ever, and experts have long said the Census Bureau must do more to reduce a persistent undercount among minorities, as well as to modernize what is basically a paper mailing operation that has been in place for decades.

On the White House: The Political Stakes Are High as U.S. Counts Noses
NYTIMES
By PETER BAKER
February 20, 2009

WASHINGTON — If they were injected with truth serum, most politicians in Washington would admit they do not really care much who runs the Commerce Department. But many of the most astute politicians in both parties care very much who runs the Census Bureau.

That’s why Senator Judd Gregg’s withdrawal as President Obama’s nominee for commerce secretary provoked such a furor among Republicans: they concluded that he pulled out because of White House plans to take control of the Census Bureau, part of the department he would have run. The White House denied it was trying to politicize the census, but the damage was done.

While most Americans do not think much about the census, it looms large in the lives of the nation’s political leaders, with the next decennial nose-count due next year. The constitutionally mandated “enumeration” determines how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives, and helps to determine where the district lines are drawn within each state. It will also shift billions upon billions of federal dollars over the next decade from some parts of the country to others because of population-driven financing formulas.

The parties have been at loggerheads for years over how to conduct the census. Most everyone agrees that the traditional method — mail-back surveys and door-knocking follow-ups — fails to count millions of Americans. Democrats argue that the solution is to use statistical sampling models to extrapolate figures for the uncounted people. If minorities, immigrants, the poor and the homeless are the most likely to be undercounted, then such sampling would presumably benefit the Democrats.

Republicans, for their part, argue that statistical sampling is unreliable and that the Constitution mandates an actual count. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, that under current law, sampling techniques could not be used to reapportion House seats from one state to another. But some experts still believe that it could be used in drawing district lines within the states, and to determine money flows.

Mr. Gregg’s rise and fall brought that rift to the forefront. After Mr. Obama announced his nomination, the Congressional Black Caucus, the National Association of Latino Officials and others complained about having a Republican heading the department overseeing the census. The White House responded with a statement meant to assuage them, but which in the end provoked a Republican outcry and may have helped precipitate Mr. Gregg’s withdrawal.

The White House statement said: “There is historic precedent for the director of the census, who works for the commerce secretary and the president, to work closely with White House senior management, given the number of decisions that will have to be put before the president. We plan to return to that model in this administration.”

Republicans quickly took that to mean that Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, would be in charge of the census. Nothing could be more alarming for them, given Mr. Emanuel’s history as a fierce partisan and a former head of the campaign committee that helped orchestrate the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006.

When Mr. Gregg pulled out last week, he issued a statement saying he had “found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me.” He did not elaborate, and at a news conference later that day, he minimized the census dispute, calling it “only a slight issue.” Mr. Obama’s aides brushed the matter aside, saying the Census Bureau was never going to be taken out of the Commerce Department, only instructed to coordinate its efforts with the White House, as in the past.

Karl Rove, the political strategist for former President George W. Bush, said the episode underscored the stakes in the 2010 census. “It shows how difficult and fraught with implications this is,” he said in an interview. “Even small changes in policy can have big ramifications.”

He cited an example: The census counts military personnel deployed overseas as residents of the states where they deployed from, Mr. Rove said, but it has no policy regarding religious missionaries living abroad. After the 2000 census, he said, that made the difference between assignment of a House seat to North Carolina or to Utah, home of many Mormon missionaries.

Democrats do not disagree about the consequences of the upcoming census. But they said Republicans had drummed up false issues. Kenneth Prewitt, who directed the 2000 census under former President Bill Clinton, said the bureau always answered to the White House as well as the commerce secretary, and he saw no change under Mr. Obama. As for politicization, he said an appointed commerce secretary is just as liable to politicize the census as the White House is.

“The census has many bosses,” Mr. Prewitt said in an interview. “The idea that somehow the White House could control the census in a manner that would have implications for the allocation of seats to the states or to the redistricting process is silly.”

Mr. Obama now has to pick another commerce secretary to replace Mr. Gregg. But he also has to pick a director of the Census Bureau itself. Mr. Prewitt denied speculation that he would return to do the job again. “That’s just chatter in the system,” he said.


Carol Hogue

Recession breeds fewer babies
CT POST
By Mike Stobbe, Associated press
Updated: 08/07/2009 11:20:30 PM EDT

ATLANTA -- There aren't just fewer jobs in a recession. There are fewer babies, too.

U.S. births fell in 2008, the first full year of the recession, marking the first annual decline in births since the start of the decade and ending an American baby boomlet.  The downturn in the economy best explains the drop in maternity, some experts believe. The Great Depression and subsequent recessions all were accompanied by a decline in births, said Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health and epidemiology.

And the numbers have never rebounded until the economy pulled out of it, she said, calling the 2008 recession the most likely culprit for fewer babies. It's not clear that it's the only explanation, however. Another expert noted a recent decline in immigration to the U.S. may also be a factor.

The nation recorded about 4,247,000 births last year, down about 68,000 from 2007, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics.

This recession began in December 2007, and since then the economy has lost almost 7 million jobs. Housing foreclosures worsened in 2007 too, and fell into a state of crisis in 2008.  The largest decline in births were in California and Florida, two states hit hardest by the housing crisis.

"I wasn't surprised," Hogue said, of the new numbers, which are not final and will be updated.

But the downturn's effect on the public psychology -- and amilies' willingness to have babies -- may not have really hit until the fall of 2008, said Stephanie Ventura of the health statistics center, the agency that put out the report.

Of course, 2007 was a year in which more babies were born in the United States than any other year in the nation's history. In the past, a fluctuation of births by 1 or 2 percent would not be seen as very significant, especially from such an unusual year.  But the drop seems to break an unusual trend. Births had been rising since 2002, and birth rates had been increasing in women of different age groups, said Ventura, chief of the agency's reproductive statistics branch.

The new report is an early count of births from each state, and does not contain demographic breakdowns that might more completely explain whether birth declines occurred in some groups, but not others.  Births were up in January, February and April of 2008 compared to 2007, but were down every month after that except September. The largest declines were in October and November.  Births were down in all but 10 states, primarily the northwest quadrant of the country, including North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington and Alaska.

In contrast, births in California were down by 15,000 and in Florida, by 8,000, compared to 2007.  While the recession probably played an important role in fewer babies, another factor may be the net decline in recent years in immigration to the United States, said Mark Mather, demographer with the Population Reference Bureau.

"If there are fewer immigrants coming to the U.S., there are fewer moms and dads," said Mather, noting that California and Florida are states with large immigrant populations.

"I don't think we have enough data to know for sure what's going on," he added.

About half of U.S. pregnancies are unplanned. But Hogue, the Emory professor, said the recession likely affected the other half.  The recession also may have cut into the number of unplanned
pregnancies that progressed to live births, but it's hard to say. Abortion statistics for 2008 are not yet available, Hogue said.