Chicago Diversity Map by Census Tract

[chet everett]

I have a real bad feeling that the places that got much poorer also are seeing a concentration of single non-majority race...

[marothisu]

I forgot that census tracts can change from each census. I'll still do it but some areas may very well be an eye test. If I want to create more work for myself, I may analyze which tracts have the same boundaries between 2000 and 2010.

[Stillers]

This may be more of a Census question than anything else, but I wonder how much transience comes into play with map like these? For example, people that still haven't transferred their driver license over to Illinois from other states, people in the 24-29 demo that move every year/couple of years, etc.

Do you think things like these would make much of a difference?

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Stillers

This may be more of a Census question than anything else, but I wonder how much transience comes into play with map like these? For example, people that still haven't transferred their driver license over to Illinois from other states, people in the 24-29 demo that move every year/couple of years, etc.

Do you think things like these would make much of a difference?

No, it makes no difference. They don't mine data from local governments. Every residence gets a questionairre and/or someone who actually physically comes to their residence to take the data.

The thing way more at play are the people who don't even fill it out/answer their doors who think the census is pointless, and also the undocumented persons population who hides from doing it. There could very well be 200,000 more people in Chicago than the official count (and that goes for other cities as well).

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by marothisu

No, it makes no difference. They don't mine data from local governments. Every residence gets a questionairre and/or someone who actually physically comes to their residence to take the data.

The thing way more at play are the people who don't even fill it out/answer their doors who think the census is pointless, and also the undocumented persons population who hides from doing it. There could very well be 200,000 more people in Chicago than the official count (and that goes for other cities as well).

Technically the Dept of Commerce considers the actual formulae that is uses to extrapolate data for households that have not sent back their decenial census forms their own version of "Above Top Secret" but for those of us that understand how the poltics of norming enter into the data reporting there are lots of clues about what really goes into the "secret sauce" -- Housing Perspectives (from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies): A Surge in Hispanic Household Growth? The Challenge of Interpreting Short-Term Trends in Datasets that are Occasionally Adjusted

Bottomline, local governments, especially in urban setting where there are all kinds of factions, have a whole lot of incentives to "help" massage numbers...

[marothisu]

No disagreeing there about the fact that local governments have a lot of incentives to massage numbers. This happens in many areas of the world too, or people helping out where most of their families live/their place of growing up. I think the most prevalent I've ever seen is Istanbul, though in reverse. About 4 million of its residents are estimated to be registered in their "hometowns" instead of Istanbul.