Homelessness 2023

A number of posts have dealt with homelessness.  

HUD Annual Homelessness Assessment Report:

• On a single night in 2023, roughly 653,100 people – or about 20 of every 10,000 people in the United States – were experiencing homelessness. Six in ten people were experiencing sheltered homelessness—that is, in an emergency shelter (ES), transitional housing (TH), or safe haven (SH) program—while the remaining four in ten were experiencing unsheltered homelessness in places not meant for human habitation.
• Experiences of homelessness increased nationwide across all household types. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased by 12 percent, or roughly 70,650 more people.
• The 2023 Point-in-Time (PIT) count is the highest number of people reported as experiencing homelessness on a single night since reporting began in 2007. The overall increase reflects the increases in all homeless populations. Homelessness among persons in families with children experiencing homelessness rose by 16 percent. Similarly, the rise in individuals experiencing homelessness was 11 percent.
• People who identify as Black, African American, or African, as well as Indigenous people (including Native Americans and Pacific Islanders), continue to be overrepresented among the population experiencing homelessness. People who identify as Black made up just 13 percent of the total U.S. population and 21 percent of the U.S. population living in poverty but comprised 37 percent of all people experiencing homelessness and 50 percent of people experiencing homelessness as members of families with children. 

Life Expectancy Ticks Up in 2022

Mike Stobbe at AP:

U.S. life expectancy rose last year — by more than a year — but still isn’t close to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2022 rise was mainly due to the waning pandemic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers said Wednesday. But even with the large increase, U.S. life expectancy is only back to 77 years, 6 months — about what it was two decades ago.

Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, assuming the death rates at that time hold constant. The snapshot statistic is considered one of the most important measures of the health of the U.S. population. The 2022 calculations released Wednesday are provisional, and could change a little as the math is finalized.

American Men and Life Expectancy

 A release from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

We’ve known for more than a century that women outlive men. But new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and UC San Francisco shows that, at least in the United States, the gap has been widening for more than a decade. The trend is being driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid overdose epidemic, among other factors.

In a research paper, to be published online on November 13 in JAMA Internal Medicine, the authors found the difference between how long American men and women live increased to 5.8 years in 2021, the largest it’s been since 1996. This is an increase from 4.8 years in 2010, when the gap was at its smallest in recent history.

The pandemic, which took a disproportionate toll on men, was the biggest contributor to the widening gap from 2019-2021, followed by unintentional injuries and poisonings (mostly drug overdoses), accidents, and suicide.

“There’s been a lot of research into the decline in life expectancy in recent years, but no one has systematically analyzed why the gap between men and women has been widening since 2010,” said first author Brandon Yan, a UCSF internal medicine resident physician and research collaborator at Harvard Chan School.

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped in 2021 to 76.1 years, falling from 78.8 years in 2019 and 77 years in 2020.

The shortening lifespan of Americans has been attributed in part to so-called “deaths of despair.” The term refers to the increase in deaths from such causes as suicide, drug use disorders, and alcoholic liver disease, which are often connected with economic hardship, depression, and stress.

“While rates of death from drug overdose and homicide have climbed for both men and women, it is clear that men constitute an increasingly disproportionate share of these deaths,” Yan said.

Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics, Yan and fellow researchers from around the country identified the causes of death that were lowering life expectancy the most. Then they estimated the effects on men and women to see how much different causes were contributing to the gap.

Prior to the COVID pandemic, the largest contributors were unintentional injuries, diabetes, suicide, homicide, and heart disease.

But during the pandemic, men were more likely to die of the virus. That was likely due to a number of reasons, including differences in health behaviors, as well as social factors, such as the risk of exposure at work, reluctance to seek medical care, incarceration, and housing instability. Chronic metabolic disorders, mental illness, and gun violence also contributed.

Yan said the results raise questions about whether more specialized care for men, such as in mental health, should be developed to address the growing disparity in life expectancy.

“We have brought insights to a worrisome trend,” Yan said. “Future research ought to help focus public health interventions towards helping reverse this decline in life expectancy.”

Yan and co-authors, including senior author Howard Koh, professor of the practice of public health leadership at Harvard Chan School, also noted that further analysis is needed to see if these trends change after 2021.

“We need to track these trends closely as the pandemic recedes,” Koh said. “And we must make significant investments in prevention and care to ensure that this widening disparity, among many others, do not become entrenched.”

Alan Geller, senior lecturer on social and behavioral sciences at Harvard Chan School, was also a co-author.

“Widening Gender Gap in Life Expectancy in the US, 2010-2021,” Brandon W. Yan, Elizabeth Erias, Alan C. Geller, Donald R. Miller, Kenneth D. Kochanek, Howard K. Koh, JAMA Internal Medicine, online November 13, 2023, doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.6041

Attention to Political News

Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

There are wide differences in the amount of attention paid to national political news by age and educational attainment. In the current survey, 51% of U.S. adults aged 65 and older say they follow political news very closely, as do 40% of those between the ages of 50 and 64. Far fewer 30- to 49-year-olds (26%), and especially 18- to 29-year-olds (9%), are following politics very closely.

More than four in 10 college graduates (including those with and without a postgraduate education) follow political news very closely, while fewer than three in 10 adults without a college degree do.

There are modest gender differences in attention to politics, with more men (35%) than women (30%) following politics very closely. Republicans and Democrats pay similar levels of attention, but independents pay less than either of the two major party groups.

These subgroup differences are similar to what Gallup has observed since 2001, although the levels of attention measured in the 2023 poll are lower than usual for postgraduates and young adults and higher for senior citizens. Postgraduates typically pay the closest attention to politics, with an average of 51% doing so since 2001.

Life Expectancy and Education

 Anne Case and Angus Deaton:at Brookings:

The widening gap in death rates between Americans with and without a four-year college degree shows the U.S. economy is failing working class people, suggests a paper discussed at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) conference on September 28.

The U.S. economy, as measured by conventional metrics such as growth in gross domestic product (GDP), has recently outperformed other advanced economies. But mortality data paint a different picture, according to “Accounting for the Widening Mortality Gap between American Adults with and without a BA.”

“GDP may be doing great, but people are dying in increasing numbers, especially less-educated people,” Anne Case, one of the authors, said in an interview with The Brookings Institution. “A lot of the increasing prosperity is going to the well-educated elites. It is not going to typical working people.”

She and co-author Angus Deaton, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, both of Princeton University, analyzed U.S. death certificate information, including the age of death, cause of death, and educational attainment. They found that life expectancy for the college educated in 2021 was eight-and-a-half years longer than for the two-thirds of American adults without a bachelor’s degree. That’s more than triple the 1992 gap of about two-and-a-half years.

... 

 Deaths of despair were the leading driver of the widening mortality gap over the past 30 years, but the gap also widened for most other major causes of death, the paper notes. Cancer mortality, for instance, has declined overall but it has declined more for people with college degrees.

The mortality gap widened explosively during the pandemic, according to the paper. Both COVID-19 deaths and deaths of despair were more common among people without college degrees, who were more likely to work in public-facing jobs, use public transportation, and live in crowded quarters.

“People with BAs have Zoom. People without BAs don’t have Zoom; they have to go to work,” Deaton said.

 

Sticky States

Texas natives likeliest to ‘stick’ around, pointing to state’s economic health

Ana Pranger, Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas August 29, 2023

The share of people born in a state and who stay there can provide an important measure of its attractiveness to workers. The stickiness of native residents is also key to maintaining a stable (or growing) population and workforce, which is vital to economic growth.

To figure out which states are best at retaining their native residents, we calculated the stickiness of each state. Using American Community Survey (ACS) data, we estimated the share of people born in each state who still lived in that state as of the 2021 survey (Chart 1).

Downloadable chart | Chart data

Texas is the stickiest state in the country by far, with approximately 82 percent of native Texans still living here in 2021. Other sticky states include North Carolina (75.5 percent), Georgia (74.2 percent), California (73.0 percent) and Utah (72.9 percent).

At the other end of the spectrum, Wyoming is the least-sticky state, with only 45.2 percent of natives remaining there. North Dakota and Alaska were the only other states with less than half their native population staying there (48.6 percent and 48.7 percent, respectively). Rhode Island (55.2 percent) and South Dakota (54.2 percent) round out the bottom five.

Notably, the least-sticky states tend to see high levels of outmigration of everyone—not just their native residents (Chart 2).Downloadable chart | Chart data

Overall outmigration numbers track everyone moving from one state to another state, including both people born there and those who moved there before leaving, making them a better indicator of population flows.

In addition to being the stickiest state, Texas had the lowest outmigration rate in 2021, followed by Maine and Michigan. Wyoming, Alaska and Hawaii experienced the highest outmigration rates.

US Has Fallen Behind in Life Expectancy

American Journal of Public Health, "Falling Behind: The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy Between the United States and Other Countries, 1933–2021,"   by Steven H. Woolf MD, MPH.

Objectives. To document the evolution of the US life expectancy disadvantage and regional variation across the US states.

Methods. I obtained life expectancy estimates in 2022 from the United Nations, the Human Mortality Database, and the US Mortality Database, and calculated changes in growth rates, US global position (rank), and state-level trends.

Results. Increases in US life expectancy slowed from 1950 to 1954 (0.21 years/annum) and 1955 to 1973 (0.10 years/annum), accelerated from 1974 to 1982 (0.34 years/annum), and progressively deteriorated from 1983 to 2009 (0.15 years/annum), 2010 to 2019 (0.06 years/annum), and 2020 to 2021 (–0.97 years/annum). Other countries experienced faster growth in each phase except 1974 to 1982. During 1933 to 2021, 56 countries on 6 continents surpassed US life expectancy. Growth in US life expectancy was slowest in Midwest and South Central states.

Conclusions. The US life expectancy disadvantage began in the 1950s and has steadily worsened over the past 4 decades. Dozens of globally diverse countries have outperformed the United States. Causal factors appear to have been concentrated in the Midwest and South.

Public Health Implications. Policies that differentiate the United States from other countries and circumstances associated with the Midwest and South may have contributed. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(9):970–980. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307310)

I consider this chart to be the clearest indictment of our country’s path over the last several decades: In 1980, the U.S. had a typical life expectancy for an affluent country. Today, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy of any affluent country: pic.twitter.com/GhUIn9fzdb

— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) August 22, 2023

Young Voters

Michael Baharaeen at The Liberal Patriot:

Another front on which these cultural shifts occur is age—and this factor has offered a clear advantage to one of the two parties in recent years. To wit: the youth vote remains stubbornly Democratic at the moment. While it has historically been common for people to grow more conservative as they age, this just doesn’t appear to be happening with millennials.

The Financial Times’s John Burn-Murdoch brilliantly documented how compared to the previous three generations—all of whom voted more Republican the further they got into life—millennials have been trending in the opposite direction so far...

This was especially visible in the 2022 midterms, when Gen Z and millennial voters were the lone generation to vote more Democratic in the national U.S. House vote relative to the 2020 election. Moreover, according to the General Social Survey, young people have voted more Democratic in the last four presidential elections—compared to both other age brackets and their own cohort’s past performance—than at any other time in the past half century.

Among the theories for why younger voters are staying liberal into adulthood is that these voters have also adopted other traits that differ from previous generations—traits that have made them more predisposed to voting Democratic. For example, younger Americans are a less religious cohort. Many are getting married later in life and also forgoing having children. Young people are also growing up in a much more tolerant and diverse society than many of their parents did.

Additionally, there is some evidence that the political events that happened during their formative years—the War on Terror, the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of Donald Trump, increased gun violence, climate change—likely left an imprint on them that will not soon be shaken. Political scientists affiliated with the Democratic data firm Catalist have used sophisticated statistical modeling to track differences by age group over time. 

Racial Identity is Fluid

David Byler at WP:

Many Americans assume race is a constant: something people are born into and that — like their birth date or country of origin — simply doesn’t change.

But for a surprising number of us, race is a fluid concept. Polling data show that roughly 8 percent of adults jumped from one racial category to another in recent years. And that has important political implications for the Republican Party.

The best data on race-switching comes from panel surveys conducted by academics. These studies — such as the General Social Survey, the American National Election Studies and the Cooperative Election Study — ask a representative sample of Americans about their views and identities and then contact them again four to eight years later to track how they have changed.

...

In recent elections, some voters changed their race and their vote at the same time.

For example, 59 percent of multiracial Trump converts — that is, mixed-race voters who passed on Mitt Romney in 2012 but voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — also switched their race to White. Among multiracial voters who didn’t support Trump or Romney, only 4 percent moved into the White category.

Juliana Jiménez Jaramillo at Slate:

Ricky and Lucy were considered one of the first interracial couples on television, even though Desi Arnaz, who played Ricky on I Love Lucy, came from a white Cuban family. Despite being white, television executives opposed his casting, saying the public wouldn’t go for a “Latin” as the husband of an “All-American girl.” It was only after Lucille Ball insisted that they reluctantly agreed.

His whiteness wasn’t enough for him to go unnoticed, but it did allow him to get as far as he did in show business in 1950s America. A CBS creative consultant on the I Love Lucy 50th Anniversary Special, Alex Abella, who is Cuban-born himself, said to Hispanic magazine in 2001, “If Desi were black or had black blood, he wouldn’t have had any success or been allowed on the air. Americans could accept him because—like it or not—he was white.”

Changing Demographics

 From the Census:

JUNE 22, 2023 — The nation’s median age increased by 0.2 years to 38.9 years between 2021 and 2022, according to Vintage 2022 Population Estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Median age is the age at which half of the population is older and half of the population is younger.

“As the nation’s median age creeps closer to 40, you can really see how the aging of baby boomers, and now their children — sometimes called echo boomers — is impacting the median age. The eldest of the echo boomers have started to reach or exceed the nation’s median age of 38.9,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division. "While natural change nationally has been positive, as there have been more births than deaths, birth rates have gradually declined over the past two decades. Without a rapidly growing young population, the U.S. median age will likely continue its slow but steady rise.”

A third (17) of the states in the country had a median age above 40.0 in 2022, led by Maine with the highest at 44.8, and New Hampshire at 43.3. Utah (31.9), the District of Columbia (34.8), and Texas (35.5) had the lowest median ages in the nation. Hawaii had the largest increase in median age among states, up 0.4 years to 40.7.

...

Views of BLM 2023

 From Pew:

Ten years after the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag first appeared on Twitter, about half of U.S. adults (51%) say they support the Black Lives Matter movement, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Three years ago, following the murder of George Floyd, two-thirds expressed support for the movement.

.
Views of the Black Lives Matter movement vary by: 

• Race and ethnicity: 81% of Black adults say they support the movement, compared with 63% of Asian adults, 61% of Hispanic adults and 42% of White adults. White adults are more likely than those in other racial and ethnic groups to describe the movement as divisive and dangerous (about four-in-ten White adults do so, compared with 30% or fewer among the other groups), and they are the least likely to describe it as empowering.
• Age: 64% of adults ages 18 to 29 support the movement, compared with 52% of those 30 to 49, 46% of those 50 to 64 and 41% of those 65 and older. Some 41% of young adults (ages 18 to 29) say empowering describes the movement extremely or very well and 27% say the same about inclusive, larger than the share of adults ages 30 and older who say those words describe the movement well. And while 49% of young adults say the movement has been highly effective at bringing attention to racism, 32% of those ages 30 to 49, 27% of those 50 to 64 and 22% of those 65 and older say this.
• Partisanship: 84% of Democrats and Democratic leaners support the movement, while 82% of Republicans and Republican leaners oppose it. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say the words empowering (42% vs. 11%) and inclusive (27% vs. 11%) describe the movement extremely or very well. Republicans, in turn, are more likely than Democrats to say the words dangerous (59% vs. 9%) and divisive (54% vs. 19%) describe the movement well.

l.

College Inequality

Many posts have discussed economic and educational inequality. The effects of inequality reach many corners of American life.

Ari Pinkus at The American Communities Project:

Nationally, just 34% of Americans ages 25 or older have a four-year college degree. The numbers are very uneven around the country. The range runs from 42% in the affluent, multicultural, professional Urban Suburbs to 16% in the young, rural, and low-income Native American Lands.

In College Town counties, 38% have college degrees, just above the national average. These 171 counties, often located in and around more rural, settled areas, present a good example of varying educational levels colliding. After all, many are not yet college graduates. Others hold master’s, professional, and/or doctoral degrees. Still others outside the college structure may not have nor be on track toward a bachelor’s degree. It’s not uncommon for town-gown relations to be strained, even contentious at times.

Meanwhile, in Rural Middle America and Aging Farmlands, comprising 896 counties in the Plains and the country’s upper tier, many have derided college and are pushing for a broader educational focus on the trades. In each county type, just over 20% have college degrees. While bachelor’s degree percentages are lowest in Native American Lands, bachelor’s figures are also low in young, rural, Hispanic Centers in the West, Southwest, and Florida; Working Class Country, lower-income communities in Appalachia; and Evangelical Hubs, lower-income communities in the South with high numbers of Evangelical adherents.

In 2020, Barabara Jacoby wrote at Inside Higher Ed:

The “new normal” we’re all talking about entails huge changes to residence halls and residential life. But, with or without COVID-19, the stark reality is that less than 15 percent of college students live on campuses. And their number is likely to shrink this fall as more students have to commute from home because of coronavirus-related family and financial issues or are forced into off-campus housing as a result of reducing dorm density.

Commuter students are defined as those who do not live in institution-owned housing on campuses. They make up more than 85 percent of today’s college students.

Their numbers include students of traditional age who live with their parents, those who live in rental housing near the campus, adults with full-time careers and parents living with their own children. Forty-one percent are 25 years of age or older, and 39 percent attend part-time. As many as 70 percent of full-time students work while enrolled in college, as do almost all part-time students. Those characteristics are more likely to apply to commuter students and, despite COVID-19’s disruptions, are also more likely to hold true in the upcoming academic year.

Census: Aging America

 From the Census Bureau:

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2020 Census Demographic Profile and Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (DHC). These products provide the next round of data available from the 2020 Census, adding more detail to the population counts and basic demographic and housing statistics previously released for the purposes of congressional apportionment and legislative redistricting.

... 

• The 2020 Census shows the following about the nation’s age and sex composition: Between 2010 and 2020, median age in the U.S. grew older due to an increase in the older population.In 2020, there were 55.8 million people age 65 and over in the United States (16.8% of the total population), up 38.6% from 40.3 million in 2010. This growth primarily reflected the aging baby boom cohort.
• Centenarians grew 50% since 2010, the fastest recent census-to-census percent change for that age group

...

• In 1970, after all the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) had been born, half of the population was younger than 28.1 years old. By 2020, the median age was 38.8, an increase of more than 10 years over the past five decades.In 2020, the population age 45 and over accounted for 42% of the total population, up from 27% in 1940, the census before the Baby Boom began.
• The share of the population age 65 and over more than doubled between 1940 and 2020, from less than 7% to nearly 17%.
• In 2020, there were over 73.1 million children under age 18 (22.1% of the total U.S. population), down 1.4% from 74.2 million in 2010. The biggest decline was among the under-5 age group, whose share of the population dropped by 8.9% or 1.8 million. This finding is consistent with the decline in the total number of births and the birth rate for the United States since 2015.
• Among the states in 2020:Fourteen states had a median age over 40, twice as many as in 2010. Twenty-five states had higher shares of population age 65 and older than Florida had in 2010 (17.3%), when it had the highest share of any state. In 2020, Maine had the highest share at 21.8%, followed by Florida (21.2%) and Vermont (20.6%).
• Utah and Maine were the youngest and oldest states (as they were in 2010). Nearly half of Utah’s population was under age 31 while more than half of Maine’s population was over age 45.

...

The public can explore these age and sex statistics in two data visualizations:
Exploring Age Groups in the 2020 Census. This interactive map shows certain measures — percent of population, percent change from 2010, percent female and racial and ethnic diversity index and prevalence — for a variety of age groups for the nation, states, counties and census tracts. The visualization also provides ranking lists of the measures.
How Has Our Nation's Population Changed? This interactive visualization shows population pyramids and ranked age and sex measures for the total population, as well as race and Hispanic origin groups, for the nation, states, metropolitan areas, micropolitan areas and counties in 2020, 2010 and 2000.

A series of downloadable ranking tables related to each visualization is also available.

More information about age and sex is also available in the America Counts stories: An Aging U.S. Population With Fewer Children in 2020 and 2020 Census: 1 in 6 People in the United States Were 65 and Over, and two briefs: Age and Sex Composition: 2020 and The Older Population: 2020.

Suicide, Depression, Isolation

 From CDC:

Males commit suicide four times more often than females.

Dan Witters at Gallup:

The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. The percentage of Americans who currently have or are being treated for depression has also increased, to 17.8%, up about seven points over the same period. Both rates are the highest recorded by Gallup since it began measuring depression using the current form of data collection in 2015.

A May 3 release from HHS:

Today, United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a new Surgeon General Advisory calling attention to the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. Disconnection fundamentally affects our mental, physical, and societal health. In fact, loneliness and isolation increase the risk for individuals to develop mental health challenges in their lives, and lacking connection can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking daily.

The Surgeon General’s Advisory on Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation - PDF lays out a framework for a National Strategy to Advance Social Connection, which has never been implemented before in the United States. It details recommendations that individuals, governments, workplaces, health systems, and community organizations can take to increase connection in their lives, communities, and across the country and improve their health.

 

Religion and Civic Participation

From PRRI:

When asked about their civic and political participation in the past year, one-third of Americans (33%) said they signed a petition either in person or online; 24% said they commented about politics on a message board or internet site, including social media; 20% said they contacted a government official; 13% said they served on a committee for a civic, nonprofit, or community organization or event; 11% said they put a sign in their yard or a bumper sticker on their car supporting a candidate for political office; 7% said they attended a political protest or rally; and just 5% said they volunteered or worked for a political campaign.

Americans who attend church at least a few times a year are notably more likely than those who seldom or never attend church to have contacted a government official (23% vs. 19%), served on a committee (17% vs. 10%), put up a sign supporting a political candidate (13% vs. 10%), or volunteered for a political campaign (7% vs. 4%). By contrast, Americans who attend church more frequently are less likely than those who seldom or never attend to have commented about politics (22% vs. 26%).

White Americans participate in civic and political activities more than nonwhite Americans do. For example, white Americans are more likely to have signed a petition (35%) or contacted a government official (24%) than both Black Americans (29% and 15%, respectively) and Hispanic Americans (26% and 14%, respectively). White Americans are also more likely than Black Americans to have commented about politics (27% vs. 15%) and are more likely than Hispanic Americans to have served on a committee (14% vs. 10%) or put a sign in their yard supporting a candidate (12% vs 8%).

When examining religious attendance together with race and civic and political participation, white churchgoers are notably more likely than white non-churchgoers to have served on a committee (17% vs. 12%), but are less likely to have commented about politics (24% vs. 29%). Black churchgoers are more likely than Black non-churchgoers to have contacted a government official (20% vs. 11%), served on a committee (19% vs. 7%), or volunteered for a political campaign (9% vs. 3%). Hispanic churchgoers are also more likely than Hispanic non-churchgoers to have contacted a government official (20% vs. 11%), served on a committee (15% vs. 6%), or put up a sign supporting a candidate (12% vs. 5%). Churchgoers of other racial groups are more likely than non-churchgoers of other races to have served on a committee (20% vs. 7%) or volunteered for a political campaign (12% vs. 3%).[5]

California Shrinking

From the California Department of Finance:

Stable births, fewer deaths, and a rebound in foreign immigration slowed California’s recent population decline in 2022, with the state’s population estimated at 38,940,231 people as of January 1, 2023, according to new data released today by the California Department of Finance.

Over the same period, statewide housing growth increased to 0.85 percent – its highest level since 2008. California added 123,350 housing units on net, including 20,683 accessory dwelling units (ADUs), to bring total housing in the state to 14,707,698 units. New construction represents 116,683 housing units with 63,423 single family housing units, 51,787 multi-family housing units, and 1,473 mobile homes.

The 0.35-percent population decline for 2022, roughly 138,400 persons, marks a slowdown compared to the recent decline during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Between 2021 and 2022, California’s population decreased 0.53 percent or 207,800 persons, due mainly to sharp declines in natural increase and foreign immigration.

For 2022, natural increase – the net amount of births minus deaths -- increased from 87,400 in 2021 to 106,900 in 2022. Births decreased slightly from 420,800 in 2021 to 418,800 in 2022, while deaths declined gradually from 333,300 persons in 2021 to 311,900 persons in 2022, respectively.

Foreign immigration nearly tripled in 2022 compared to the prior year, with a net gain of 90,300 persons in 2022 compared to 31,300 in 2021. While foreign immigration to California has nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, natural increase has not rebounded. Total births remain low due to fertility declines; while deaths have eased gradually from their pandemic peak, they remain elevated.

With slower domestic in-migration and increased domestic out-migration likely the result of workfrom-home changes, declines in net domestic migration offset the population gains from natural increase and international migration.. 

Gen Z

Carl Smith at Governing:

In Brief:

• Gen Z and millennial voters are on their way to becoming the majority of the voting population.
• In 2026, Gen Z will become the first majority nonwhite generation.
• Some think these trends could benefit Democrats, but researchers find that the life challenges young voters face make them care more about policy than party.

...

A survey published in February by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution found that more than 5 in 10 Republicans believe the U.S. should be “a strictly Christian" nation. Nearly as many Gen Zers and millennials say that they have no religious affiliation at all.

Younger voters are the issue.

It comes from years of radical indoctrination - on campus, in school, with social media, & throughout culture. We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again. @yaf pic.twitter.com/eG0pt3w8hk

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) April 6, 2023

Beats and Journalist Demographics

 Many posts have dealt with news media

Emily Tomasik and Jeffrey Gottfried at Pew:

Journalists’ beats also vary by their employment status – that is, whether they are freelance or self-employed journalists, or full- or part-time journalists at a news organization.

White Christians in Decline

 Robert P. Jones:

[All] white Christian subgroups—white evangelical Protestant, white non-evangelical/mainline Protestant, and white Catholic—have declined across the last two decades. Notably, in the last ten years, white evangelical Protestants have experienced the steepest decline. As recently as 2006, white evangelical Protestants comprised nearly one-quarter of Americans (23%). By the time of Trump’s rise to power, their numbers had dipped to 16.8%. Today, white evangelical Protestants comprise only 13.6% of Americans. As a result of this precipitous decline, white evangelical Protestants are now roughly the same size as white non-evangelical/mainline Protestants, a group that experienced its own decline decades early, but has now generally stabilized.

... 

As the numbers of white Christians have dropped, their presence in our two political parties has also shifted. Two decades ago, white Christians comprised approximately 8 in 10 Republicans, compared to about half of Democrats, a gap of about 30 percentage points. As their numbers have declined, this gap has increased to about 45 percentage points, with white Christians continuing to account for about 7 in 10 Republicans but only about one quarter of Democrats.

...

If we overlay the current ethno-religious composition of our two political parties onto the generational cohort chart, we see a stunning result. In terms of its racial and religious composition, the Democratic Party looks like 20-year-old America, while the Republican Party looks like 80-year-old America.

Non-Catholic Irish Americans

 Maurice O'Sullivan at America:

While I recognize that change, I also know that no one back in my Jersey City youth could have imagined someone named Kevin McCarthy as either a Baptist or an ally of anti-immigrant activists like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, a woman who once said that Satan controlled the Catholic Church. Yet today few are surprised that the speaker, the great-grandson of an Irish Catholic immigrant from County Cork and the first Republican in his family, reportedly attends Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield, Calif.

At the same time, Mr. McConnell’s membership in Louisville Southeast Christian Church, an evangelical megachurch, follows logically from his family’s Presbyterian, Scots-Irish roots. Although his family also came from Ireland’s southernmost county, Cork, they joined the first great immigration from Ulster or Northern Ireland to the original 13 American colonies. While a few adapted to the Anglo-Germanic-Quaker culture of Middle Colonies like Pennsylvania, most moved to Appalachia and the South.

Their greatest influence was in Arkansas and in Appalachian states like Tennessee and Kentucky, which Senator McConnell now represents. As they settled in the mountainous regions of Appalachia and the Ozarks, they often named at least one of their sons after their hero, King William III of England, who defeated the largely Catholic army of the deposed King James II. Members of Ulster’s Orange Order continue to celebrate King Billy’s victory in their own parade each July 12, donning bowler hats, white gloves and orange sashes each to demonstrate their loyalty to the United Kingdom.