Category: Demographics
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Move to the City, Young Man, Move to the City
Virginians are most likely to move to another jurisdiction when they reach age 18 and head to college and again as they establish themselves in the job market. As they grow older and sink personal and professional roots in a community, their proclivity for moving steadily declines. Only when Virginians hit retirement age does the…
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Map of the Day: Hopewell Turns Minority-Majority
Note the presence of the city of Hopewell, Va., on this map. According to the Wall Street Journal, Hopewell was one of seven counties where racial minorities came to comprise a majority in 2015. Of the nation’s 3,142 counties, 12% are minority-majorities now. — JAB
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The Metropolitanization of Virginia
by James A. Bacon A couple of weeks ago, three guys came rolling through my neighborhood in a heavy pickup truck and pitched me on cutting down some dead limbs and trees in my back yard. They lived in Rappahannock County, they said; they’d spent three hours driving to Richmond looking for work and when they finished…
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Virginia 11th Best for Veteran Retirees
Source: WalletHub Virginia scores a disappointing 11th place in WalletHub’s ranking of the “2016 Best & Worst States for Military Retirees” based on 20 metrics encompassing economic environment, quality of life and health care. The Old Dominion racked up creditable 3rd place for economic environment (eight metrics including state taxes on military pensions and percentage of…
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IG of the Day: The South (Atlantic Coast) Shall Rise Again
By the year 2040, Virginia will be the 10th most populous state in the country, if projections by the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia pan out. The Old Dominion will bump Michigan from the Top 10 list. Meanwhile, North Carolina will climb ahead of Ohio to take the No. 8 spot, and Georgia…
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Map of the Day: Virginia 2040
The year 2040 sounds like a long way off. But 24 years is not that far distant when it comes to planning roads, transit, utilities, schools and other essentials for life in the 21st century, and scrounging up the money to pay for it all. If these projections by the Demographics Research Group at the…
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“Coming Apart” — Virginia Edition
by James A. Bacon Three years ago sociologist Charles Murray wrote a book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” in which he described the social disintegration of lower-income and working-class whites in the United States. He documented the decline of marriage, the rise of out-of-wedlock births, the spread of substance abuse, and deterioration of work…
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Would the Suicide Epidemic Get More Attention if the Victims Were Women and Minorities?
When does a suicide epidemic become a national crisis? When women and minorities end their lives in greater numbers than men and whites, thus confirming the dominant narrative of a racist, patriarchal society that discriminates against all manner of oppressed groups… Until that time, the rising suicide rate will get only passing attention. Depending on the…
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Explaining Fairfax County by Way of New York City
by James A. Bacon National population migration surveys invariably show Fairfax County to be a big loser. The county experienced a net domestic out-migration of 16,800 in 2015 and 46,500 since 2010. When viewed in isolation the numbers make Virginia’s largest locality look like a war zone — call it Little Aleppo. Yet somehow the…
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What Went Wrong with Long-Term Care Insurance?
by James A. Bacon I am one of those schlubs who takes out insurance policies to protect against bad things happening. One eventuality I worry about is the need for long-term care. The longer you live and the more chronic conditions you develop, the greater the odds – about 50/50 for a 60-year-old today — that you’ll wind…
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Fat Virginia: Better than Average but a Few Pounds to Trim
Source: WalletHub Rankings based on composite metrics of fat prevalence, fat-related health issues, active lifestyle and healthy food in 100 largest U.S. metropolitan regions. Memphis ranks as the No. 1 metro with fat-related issues, Honolulu as No. 100. — JAB
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Virginia: a State that Looks Like America
Source: WalletHub As goes Virginia, so goes the nation? I doubt anybody has said that since 1800 or so. But Virginia has become a swing state in the presidential elections and a purple state in state/local elections, mirroring the divide that exists on the national level. More than any time in my memory, Virginia has…
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Where Blacks Are Most Politically Engaged
Source: WalletHub Virginia ranks 22nd among the 50 states in political engagement, as determined by WalletHub on the basis of voting turnout, registration rates, and elected representation. — JAB
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Map of the Day: Three Virginias
The statistical wonks with the StatChat blog love to depict data in interesting ways. Recently, Luke Juday divvied the Commonwealth into thirds divided by density. In the map above, the yellow mass shows the least densely populated census tracts (fewer than 736 people per square mile), accounting for 94.8% of the state’s land mass. The…
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Illegals Pay up to $300 Million in State-Local Taxes. In the Final Analysis, So What?
by James A. Bacon There are an estimated 260,000 to 290,000 illegal aliens (“undocumented workers” to those inclined to politically correct thinking) in Virginia. Each year, they pay between $200 million and $300 million in state and local taxes, according to a new report by the Commonwealth Institute. That constitutes between 6.6% to 7% of their household…