Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000

Introduction

To many, the 1990s probably seem like an innocent bygone era, with twenty-four-year-old dot-com millionaires, governments awash in surplus cash, the discovery of the grande latte, and the nation (mostly) at peace. Beyond these historical hallmarks, however, the 1990s brought unparalleled economic and demographic change to the United States, the effects of which will be felt for many decades to come. The nation added more people—32 million—over the decade than in any other ten-year period in its history, fueled by a new wave of immigration to its shores.1 Between April 1990, when the nation teetered on the verge of an economic recession, and April 2000, when unemployment hit a postwar low of 4 percent , the nation experienced its strongest economic expansion on record. That expansion lifted homeownership to new highs, with lower-income and minority families making especially large gains in the latter half of the decade. The United States does not require a full census of its inhabitants, of course, to chart these overall trends. Income, employment, and housing trends are followed closely on a monthly or quarterly basis through large federal surveys. Population estimates and projections are updated annually. Moreover, a lot can happen during ten years, and the decennial census provides a simple point-in-time depiction of the nation at the beginning and end of that interval. 1 Introduction A L A N B E R U B E , B R U C E K A T Z , A N D R O B E R T E . L A N G 1. Indeed, the latest population projections from the Census Bureau show the nation gaining only 27 million people between 2000 and 2010, well short of the increase in the 1990s. Yet the decennial census stands alone in the breadth, and depth, of its inquiry. In a country of 3.5 million square miles and nearly 300 million people , national trends tell only a small part of the stories experienced by individuals and communities. Most monthly and annual surveys conducted by federal agencies at best provide information down to the state level. Only the census provides detailed demographic and economic information for all metropolitan areas, cities, towns, and neighborhoods—the geographies that define our day-to-day lives. Moreover, the decennial census provides an important benchmark of our nation’s progress during that decade. The trajectories of income and employment trends may shift from year to year, but longer-term changes in the geography of immigration, poverty, and homeownership have likely continued their course. Using results from Census 2000, volume 1 of Redefining Urban and Suburban America showed that population growth and racial or ethnic change in the 1990s varied greatly among metropolitan areas, cities, and suburbs. Not all places shared in the significant population growth occurring at the national level. And while nearly all areas of the nation grew more racially diverse over the decade, changes occurred much more rapidly in some areas than others. Census 2000 also offers crucial insights into social and economic changes that took place across and within U.S. regions in the 1990s. This second volume of Redefining Urban and Suburban America brings several of the most compelling of these changes into sharper focus: —The number of high-poverty neighborhoods declined dramatically in most U.S. metro areas, even as the overall metropolitan poverty rate remained unchanged. —After several decades of migration to the North and West, African Americans returned to the South in record numbers. —Homeownership rose across the nation, but large urban counties, and small towns witnessing new immigration, saw significant increases in household overcrowding. THE CENSUS “LONG FORM” These and other findings explored in this volume derive largely from analysis of the census “long form.” The previous volume featured chapters based on the decennial census “short form”—seven survey questions mailed to all households in the United States asking how many people live at the address, their age, gender, race, Hispanic origin, relationship to one another, and whether or not they own their home. 2 Alan Berube, Bruce Katz, and Robert E. Lang One in six U.S. households, however, received a much longer survey, with more than fifty questions covering a wide range of subjects: migration, education , work, income, commuting, disability, housing—even whether the household has indoor plumbing. The Census Bureau statistically weights these sample data so that the reported...