September 2013
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Where wages have been flat 
A blog at http://www.governing.com/blogs/by-the-numbers/state-wages-and-pay-remain-flat.html
maps the changes in wages from 2007 through 2012. It makes you feel pretty good to be in South Dakota - although the average wage in North Dakota went up about 25 percent, which is a bit ahead of us. Nevada's wages have dropped 6.5% since 2007 - and the map gives a quick way to compare states.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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Households With Unemployed Parent
The Census Bureau released America's Families and Living Arrangements: 2012 at the end of August. It shows that "the number of households with children under 18 who had at least one unemployed parent rose by 33 percent, from 2.4 million to 3.2 million, between 2005 and 2011." That's significant. While the report presents data at the national level, the maps show the areas where individual states are ahead of the median, behind the median, or at the median.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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Give Us YOUR Opinion, Please!
The South Dakota State University Rural Life and Census Data Center is conducting a survey of its customers to learn more about our customers and receive feedback on the quality of our services. We would love to get your feedback. You can partake in the survey at the link below. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3BL9P69 |
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Striking it Richer
Emmanuel Saez, UC Berkely, published "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2012 preliminary estimates) in September. (http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf ) It's only 10 pages, so even if you don't like the message, there's not a lot to dislike. On the other hand, it has some good research, combining Census data with IRS data. Saez points out that the nation's economic recovery has been stronger among the folks with high incomes - the top one percent - than the lower incomes. For sheer statistics, the report includes "Top 1% incomes grew by 31.4% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.4% from 2009 to 2012"and points out that the cut-off for being in the top ten percent in 2012 was a pre-tax family income of $114,000. In 2012, the top .01% includes the 16,068 top families with annual income above $10,250,000. For data on those folks between, click the link and look it up. As always, data is becoming more available, so we can all check the sources.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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What's It Worth?
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SDSU Sociology Professor Doug O'Neill shared the link to What's it Worth? the economic value of college majors (http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/whatsitworth-complete.pdf ). It's 182 pages, published by Georgetown University, and probably worth checking out by parents and students alike. It didn't surprise me to learn that a third of sociology graduates go on to earn graduate degrees, though it was a little surprising that nearly one in four Bachelor's degree nurses (24%) goes on for a graduate degree. At any rate, there's a lot of data at the link.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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 World Maps
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College Students and Town Poverty Rates
I don't recall who shut me off when I explained that, if we took college students out of the equation, the poverty rate in Brookings would drop in half. It wasn't a statistic that fit in with the grant proposal, so I didn't do the work. Still, I wasn't the only one interested in the topic. Brookings turned out to be the nation's 12th highest county in the category of "Counties with Populations between 20,000 and 65,000 with Significant Changes in Poverty Rates After Excluding Off-Campus College Students: 2009-20111." With students who live off-campus included, Brookings County's poverty rate is 18.9 percent. Excluding college students not living with relatives brings the calculation down to 8.9 percent.
This, and much more information, is available in Alemayehu Bishaw's 73 page Examining the Effect of Off-Campus College Students on Poverty Rates (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/publications/bishaw.pdf ). Anotherinteresting observation was that 49.3 percent of South Dakota's college students are living with family (margin of error 2.07%). The study is based on ACS data, so is only reliable in our metropolitan and micropolitan counties.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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Measures of Well-Being
The Census has released "Extended Measures of Well-Being: Living Conditions in the United States: 2011 Household Economic Studies," by Julie Siebens this September. While the title may not have best-seller potential, these 13 pages have some good information. The last page deals with households, by age, and type of phone - showing that about 2/3 of the under-thirties are cell phone only, and that nearly a tenth of the folks over 65 are cell only.
Additionally it goes through the appliances needed to have a "full set" of electronic goods - indicated as a clothes washer (85.2% of households), dishwasher (69.3% of households) and computer (78% of households). You can link to the publication at http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p70-136.pdf
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South Dakota Specific Data May be Faster
We've been getting notifications that AmericanFactFinder is slowed due to high demand, and occasionally unavailable. It's probably one of these things that should be predictable - we always want more data, and bandwidth seems to be limited. If you have problems getting the data from AFF, remember that we have a lot of South Dakota specific data available at http://www.sdstate.edu/soc/rlcdc/index.cfm ; and that Missouri provides a great data resource at http://mcdc.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/broker?_PROGRAM=websas.sf12010x_extract_menu.sas&_SERVICE=appdev&st=51 . While demography is becoming everyone's science, and only requires internet to access information that was only available in huge libraries twenty years ago, it appears we're taxing the national level resources. We'll include an updated list of favorite links to data to provide alternate sources for folks in our next issue.
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Labor Market Win Win Info
Labor Market Information's Win-Win Network has posted multiple resources ( including webinars and PowerPoints). It's another spot where the data is available to anyone with an internet connection - one more spot where the university library type resources are right in your home. The home page is at https://winwin.workforce3one.org/page/home 
One PowerPoint (particularly relevant in demography and survey research) tells how the Current Population Survey (CPS) and Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) surveys are conducted and which topics each covers. It's available at https://winwin.workforce3one.org/view/2001312848515882696/info
We're pretty much up to date on population projections - but it was interesting to learn how the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment: Webinar: New BLS Education and Training Data for Employment Projections
It's just one more spot where demography is becoming everyone's science.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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Columbia has published "World Happiness Report," edited by John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs.
(http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Sachs%20Writing/2012/World%20Happiness%20Report.pdf)
The study is kind of motivated by Easterlin's paradox - about 40 years ago, Richard Easterlin's research indicated that individuals who made more money were happier than individuals who made less money - but that when he compared the average level of happiness in different nations, richer countries didn't show the same increased level of happiness over poorer countries. Easterlin's Paradox has had a couple of studies refuting it since 2000 - so this 170 page e-book may have the answer. It does show the US as the 10th highest nation for average life satisfaction - but the Tico's down in Costa Rica are number one.
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The SDSU State Data Center has moved
(Just down the hall). We are now occupying Scobey Hall 230, 232 and 234! This gives us more room to spread out, room for more grad assistants to work and even more room for you to sit down and tell us how we can help YOU!
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Mike's Favorite Websites:
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ACS Profiles (Missouri)
http://mcdc1.missouri.edu/acsprofiles/acsprofilemenu.html
Agriculture
http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/
American FactFinder
http://factfinder2.census.gov/
Bureau of Economic Analysis
http://www.bea.gov/regional/bearfacts/
Center for Disease Control
http://www.cdc.gov/
County Level Data
http://censtats.census.gov/usa/usa.shtml
County Business Patterns
http://www.census.gov/econ/cbp/index.html
Crime
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr
Health Stats
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/
Historical Census Browser
http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/
Life Expectancy
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/
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Migration
http://interactive.taxfoundation.org/migration/
Missouri State Data Center
http://mcdc.missouri.edu/
Mortality (CDC)
http://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd10-archive2005.html
Onthemap
http://onthemap.ces.census.gov/
SD Labor
http://dlr.sd.gov/lmic/default.aspx
Statistical Abstracts
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
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South Dakota State Data Center Affiliates
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Black Hills Council of Local Governments
Central South Dakota Enhancement District
First District Association of Local Governments
Governor's Office of Economic Development
Karl E Mundt Library
Labor Market Information Center
Northeast Council of Governments
Northern State University
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Planning & Development District III
Rural Life Census Data Center
Sioux Falls Planning Department
South Dakota Department of Health
South Dakota Kids Count
South Dakota State Data Center
South Dakota State Library
Southeast Council of Governments
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Eric Guthrie
Jeremiah Jackson
Mike McCurry
Joni Mueller
Prekchya Singh
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