Category: Demographics
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Breadwinner Moms and Income Inequality
by James A. Bacon The Pew Research Center made a big splash in May with research showing that mothers are the sole or primary source of family income for two out of five American families. The Pew study, based upon an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, yielded important insights into the dynamics of wealth…
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More Evidence for Peak Car
The number of cars, vans, SUVs and light trucks on the road in the United States peaked in 2008 at 236.4 million, dipping as low as 230 million in the aftermath of the recession. That number will likely be surpassed as the population continues to grow, says Michael Sivak, in “Has Motorization in the U.S.…
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“Jac” Cales’ PPTA Monkey-Wrench
By Peter Galuszka For four decades, James A. “Jac” Cales Jr. was a fixture on the judicial halls of Hampton Roads, albeit not one to take himself too seriously. As Portsmouth commonwealth’s attorney for a decade in the 1970s, he would lean back in his chair, his hands folded over his stomach and nod vigorously…
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Yet Another Owner for Richmond’s Unwanted Road
By Peter Galuszka Richmond’s “Road to Nowhere” is about to get yet another owner, showing again how the public-private partnership craze can result in unneeded transportation projects while denying resources elsewhere. Australia’s Transurban which owns Route 895, otherwise known as “Pocahontas Parkway” is dumping the tollroad it picked up in an emergency financial deal in…
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How Good Is Chmura’s Economics Data?
By Peter Galuszka In the 40 months since Robert F. McDonnell has been in office, the launch of many of the governor’s policy initiatives seems to be accompanied by a press release touting the supportive findings of a small, Richmond-based research firm named Chmura Economics & Analytics. When McDonnell was pushing his transportation plan to…
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City of Richmond Leads Regional Population Growth
It’s only one year’s worth of data, so I don’t want to make too much of it, but new U.S. Census numbers confirm my argument that the center of gravity of population growth and development is shifting back toward the urban core — at least in the Richmond region. Between July 2011 and July 2012,…
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IG of the Day: Teen Birth Rate
This map, posted by Richard Florida to the Atlantic Cities blog, shows state-by-state variations in the teen birth rate. Florida makes an unconvincing case that ties higher teen birth rates to the practice of religion, posture on birth control and red state governance, confusing correlation with causality. “Despite all the hectoring and moralizing,” he writes,…
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The Cooch’s Freak Show Dream Team
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Ken Cuccinelli just can’t keep away from the bizarre, but perhaps that’s what makes him what he is. He stages a convention instead of a primary to neuter Bill Bolling. And since a convention is smaller, it draws more GOP hard-righters than June bugs on a humid night and they succeed in…
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Role Reversal: Poverty Increasingly a Suburban Phenomenon
by James A. Bacon Mirroring national trends, poverty in Richmond region suburbs has grown far more rapidly since 2000 in suburban counties than in the City of Richmond, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reporting numbers published in a new book, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America.” Writes the T-D’s Graham Moomaw: “From 2000 to 2011, the…
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A Whole Lot of Commuting Going On
The Governing magazine blog has published some fascinating U.S. census data on commuting patterns in the U.S., and though the author did not pick up on this particular angle, the data shows Virginia as a real outlier. The chart above, extracted from the census data, shows Virginia counties with populations of 60,000 or more. There…
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Data Shows Hospital Billing Outrages
By Peter Galuszka It’s long been fascinating how Big Hospitals, linked with Medicare, Big Pharma and Big Managed Care, have come up with an extraordinarily convoluted system of setting prices for various hospital procedures. There is plenty of nonsense about including on this blog about bringing “free market efficiencies” to health care, as if human…
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They May Be Reading Trash, but at Least They’re Reading
It’s gratifying to see that two Virginia cities snagged top spots in Amazon.com’s 2012 ranking of the Most Well-Read Cities in America (“well read” being based upon all book, magazine and newspapers sales in print and Kindle format on a per capita basis for cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants.) Alexandria ranked No. 1 in…
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Millennials, Cars and Smart Phones
by James A. Bacon Several years ago, I gave a speech at a Virginia Department of Transportation event calling into question travel-demand forecasts based upon the extrapolation of past trends endlessly into the future. Among the looming changes I mentioned, as I recall, were the retirement of the massive Baby Boomer generation (retirees drive less),…
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IG of the Day: Physical and Emotional Well Being
Virginia scores 14th nationally in Gallup-Healthway’s 2012 Well Being Index, which incorporates the following metrics: life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behaviors, work environment and access to health care. The Washington metro ranked tops in the country for large communities, and Charlottesville third for small communities. Richmond (No. 92), Lynchburg (No. 93) and Virginia…
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A North-South Highway for Northern Virginia
The McDonnell administration has unveiled its vision for a north-south highway and other improvements to Virginia’s newest Corridor of Statewide Significance.