The US Census Bureau thread

[DCReid]

San Antonio is certainly an interesting metro to watch given this trend. I read somewhere that housing costs are now higher than Houston. I assume it is and will remain a majority minority metro but could it drop below 50% latino by 2040 or 2050?

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Yeah, when looking at the 9 metros who saw NHW growth >5% last decade, San Antonio was the most surprising to me as well.

I always think of it as being such a heavily Latino metro area, which it is, but I hadn't appreciated the fact that it has also now become one of the "cities that white people like".

Having lived there, it makes entire sense to me. Northern San Antonio’s Hills are remarkably similar in conservative political culture and geography to the rural Hill Country.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by DCReid

San Antonio is certainly an interesting metro to watch given this trend. I read somewhere that housing costs are now higher than Houston. I assume it is and will remain a majority minority metro but could it drop below 50% latino by 2040 or 2050?

Local white growth rates - although strong relative to other metros - are less than half that of the sum of local minority groups. Hispanic growth is still remarkably strong.

The dynamic that will drive white rates up will probably take until 2050 or 2060 to show up: racial intermarriage between Latinos and whites combined with a shift in the “color line.” There’s already evidence that many Latinos are following in the same footsteps as Italians, Irish, and others in becoming “white.” Texas is likely the place where these dynamics will be the most visible and politically important.

I doubt this would ever push San Antonio into majority white status, however.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Having lived there, it makes entire sense to me. Northern San Antonio’s Hills are remarkably similar in conservative political culture and geography to the rural Hill Country.

I was only a bit surprised because San Antonio has the highest Latino % of any 1M+ MSA, so the fact that it also saw one of the largest NHW increases last decade was a bit unexpected, but like most things in Texas, San Antonio is robustly growing across the board, and as you pointed out, the Latino growth was significantly larger than the NHW growth last decade, so there's no danger of it becoming NHW majority anytime soon.

Speaking of Latino metro's, as of 2020, there were only 3 Latino majority major MSAs, and 3 Latino plurality ones. I wonder which MSAs will switch over next. Miami and LA are really close.

Latino majority:

San Antonio: 54.3%
Fresno: 53.6%
Riverside: 51.6%


Latino plurality:

Miami: 45.9%
LA: 44.6%
Houston: 37.5%

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

The dynamic that will drive white rates up will probably take until 2050 or 2060 to show up: racial intermarriage between Latinos and whites combined with a shift in the “color line.” There’s already evidence that many Latinos are following in the same footsteps as Italians, Irish, and others in becoming “white.” Texas is likely the place where these dynamics will be the most visible and politically important.

Most Latinos have some degree of European ancestry, so a "generic white American" of northwestern European ancestry marrying a mestizo Mexican (let's say half white, half Amerindian) is really not any different than marrying, say, a person of mixed Portuguese-Algonquian heritage in terms of race. Phenetically, they may yield different offspring.

The "color line" for being "white" is a function of "how far away" you can be from "being black."

[DCReid]

Immigration drove white, Asian population growth in US last year

Without immigration, the white population in the U.S. would have declined last year.

Immigration also propelled the expansion of the Asian population, which was the fastest-growing race or ethnic group last year in the U.S., while births outpacing deaths helped propel growth in Hispanic, Black, tribal and Hawaiian populations.

Population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau show what drove changes in different race, ethnic and age groups last year, as well as since the start of COVID-19's spread in the U.S. in April 2020. The country had grown to 333.2 million people by the middle of last year, a 0.4% increase over the previous year, according to the 2022 population estimates...


https://www.wsbtv.com/news/national/...QU47BPG2AWSYA/

[iheartthed]

Miami's population boom may have hit a wall:

WSJ: Miami Sees Its First Population Drop in Decades

Story by Konrad Putzier, Deborah Acosta|July 31, 2023

Miami, a global hot spot with ambitions to be a business and financial hub, is driving away more residents than it is attracting.

Surging housing costs and a fickle labor market, which by one measure still hasn’t recovered from the pandemic, are sending many locals packing. Miami-Dade lost 79,535 people through net migration to other parts of Florida or other states between 2020 and 2022, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Brookings Institution.

...

via MSN: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/real...es/ar-AA1eBNt1

[Crawford]

Maybe BLM and Antifa looted and burned down South Florida? Isn't that the standard alt-right response? Or people are fleeing Florida's high taxes, regulation and socialist Governor?

[galleyfox]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Maybe BLM and Antifa looted and burned down South Florida? Isn't that the standard alt-right response? Or people are fleeing Florida's high taxes, regulation and socialist Governor?

The household size bug bites again.

Also, Miami-Dade County adding new households slower than Chicago during the pandemic didn’t help.

It might be interesting if the press coverage changes, now that Sunbelt cities are some of the only places remaining that have the potential for large household size drops.

[Chisouthside]

I think for the sake of being consistent and given how the yearly census estimates have been wrong with other large cities, I can see these numbers also being incorrect for miami.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Chisouthside

I think for the sake of being consistent and given how the yearly census estimates have been wrong with other large cities, I can see these numbers also being incorrect for miami.

It is certainly very possible that they are wrong, but I think the estimates tended to be closer to accurate for Miami in the past, unlike cities in the northeast which were perpetually underestimated.

[dave8721]

Miami (Miami-Dade County in this case) has had a huge negative net migration with the rest of the US for decades now. It is the huge international migration that allows it to grow. Immigration slowed considerably during covid (and it still relatively slow). Places like Miami and Los Angeles felt it the strongest.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Miami's population boom may have hit a wall:

South Florida only makes sense if you make your money elsewhere, own your own business, or are sitting on generational wealth. Simply, there aren't enough good paying jobs to make it workable for most people.

On top of that, in the coming years, the insurance carriers are gonna make living in Florida nearly impossible for all but the wealthiest people, and when that happens, what's the point? The energy in vibrant places like South Florida comes from the diversity of every day people. Not the 1%.

[ChiSoxRox]

We get the 2023 county estimates on Thursday the 14th.

Unfortunately, judging by the statewide estimates from December, coastal California and NYC will still be negative, which I am getting skeptical of. It's not the pre-vax doldrums of 2021 anymore...

[Steely Dan]

^ I've been EXTREMELY skeptical of the CB's apparent dartboard approach to population estimates for over 30 years now.

The bigger and messier and more urban the city is, the more they seem to know fuck all about estimating it.

[mhays]

The counts have their own problems. The only certainty is that they're both wrong in different ways.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ I've been EXTREMELY skeptical of the CB's apparent dartboard approach to population estimates for over 30 years now.

The bigger and messier and more urban the city is, the more they seem to know fuck all about estimating it.

I don't know their methodology, but I think the reason why they get the Northeastern cities so wrong is a combination of undercounting immigrants and multi-family dwellings, generally...but also because the region is so compact that lots of people never bother updating their various official documents...it's particularly true of young professionals.

Do you know how many people I know in NYC who still have their (drivers) licenses from (insert home state here) from a place they left ten years ago. Do you know how many young people live in NYC or Philly in reality but keep their address listed at their parent's houses in the suburbs to avoid paying local city taxes? It's HUNDREDS of thousands.

It only gets rectified when the physical count is done.

[Yuri]

I find unfair such criticisms on US Census Bureau. They're pretty much the only office that even try to make such granular population estimates and they're very good on it. Most offices simply reproduce what happened on the previous intercensus period, apply some reducer/accelerator and that's it.

And it's even more challenging as the US has by far the most mobile population in the world. People move around as often as they change underwear. Estimates for cities/counties in such scenario must be very hard and the US Census Bureau seems to be up to the task.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Yuri

the US Census Bureau seems to be up to the task.

HARD disagree.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown

I don't know their methodology, but I think the reason why they get the Northeastern cities so wrong is a combination of undercounting immigrants and multi-family dwellings, generally...but also because the region is so compact that lots of people never bother updating their various official documents...it's particularly true of young professionals.

Do you know how many people I know in NYC who still have their (drivers) licenses from (insert home state here) from a place they left ten years ago. Do you know how many young people live in NYC or Philly in reality but keep their address listed at their parent's houses in the suburbs to avoid paying local city taxes? It's HUNDREDS of thousands.

It only gets rectified when the physical count is done.

Doesn't the USCB use housing starts to estimate the population in the interim period? I think that's why they major cities so wrong all the time. It seems like a particularly faulty method for places in the northeast that don't have a lot of new units relative to population, and also have a strong culture of sharing homes with non-relatives.