We’re reporting Census data all wrong

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2022-01-07 02:27Z by Steven

We’re reporting Census data all wrong

Boston Indicators
Cambridge, Massachusetts
2021-12-13

Luc Schuster, Director
Boston Indicators, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Traditional reporting of census data may be contributing to misleading findings about actual demographic change.

Census data on race and ethnicity are invaluable for understanding who we are as a region and how we’re changing over time. Invaluable, yes. But also imperfect. Headlines during the census count last year focused on challenges facing Census Bureau workers during a pandemic and on the Trump administration’s efforts to depress the count in certain areas. But the physical count isn’t the only problem. While back-end reporting changes for the 2020 Census in some ways help us see more clearly who we are as a multiracial, multiethnic nation, other changes have led to misleading findings about actual demographic change. These challenges are compounded by traditional reporting approaches used by researchers like us that have tended to not include all people who select a given race on their census form.

Fortunately, alternatives exist for painting a more accurate picture. These judgment calls make an especially large difference for Boston’s White, Black, and Native American populations, as shown in the graph below, but the traditional reporting approach skews other race totals as well. Traditional reporting of 2020 census data understates Boston’s Black population by almost 43,000 residents…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Multiracial in Greater Boston: The Leading Edge of Demographic Change

Posted in Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Reports, Social Science, United States on 2022-01-06 20:28Z by Steven

Multiracial in Greater Boston: The Leading Edge of Demographic Change

Boston Indicators, Cambridge, Massachusetts
2021-11-17
30 pages

Trevor Mattos, Senior Research Manager

Luc Schuster, Senior Director

Peter Ciurczak, Research Associate

The United States is a nation of immigrants. And so is the region of Greater Boston. We’ve gone through waves of being more and less open to immigration, but the effect across recent generations has been a steadily diversifying population. Not only is racial diversity increasing in the aggregate, but a growing number of families are forming across racial and ethnic lines. Today, for instance, one in five babies born in Massachusetts is of mixed race or Latino ethnicity. The report provides detail on these shifting demographic patterns and engages with what they mean for our communities more broadly.

Read the entire report here.

Tags: , , , , , ,