The Diversification of America

The population of the United States has more than doubled since 1950, and along with that growth has been a substantial shift in the demographic makeup of the population. In 1950, 97.5% of the population was either non-Hispanic White or Black. By 2020, the Hispanic...

Changing Regional Fortunes

A few weeks ago, we examined the changes to the patterns of manufacturing employment and a natural follow-up is to consider the impacts on regional income. Income is particularly difficult to study over time since the geographic study areas change over time as does...

The Decline of Manufacturing

It is common knowledge that over the past few decades, the American economy has shifted away from manufacturing as we move towards being a service and information economy.  At its peak in 1979, manufacturing employed over 19 million workers, which was over 22% of...

Estimating Missing Data

Many data sources which appear to be national coverage at a specific geography level will often have missing records. There are a wide variety of methods which can be used to ‘infill’ missing records from the simplistic (assign it the average value or a geographically...

Back to School, But Which School?

It’s back to school season, which makes us want to buy a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils. But as children go back to school, the place where they are attending might be different. Of all of the things that have changed for children since the start of the Covid-19...