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Links
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As I write this, I've been systematically deluged by the news media's coverage of the Affordable Care Act . . .
Obamacare to most. While it is interesting to read about a website's failure the first time, geometric progression tends to reduce my fascination as the topic is repeated. Consequently, I was pleased to see that the Census has published "The Young and Uninsured in America: 2012" ( http://www.census.gov/how/infographics/young_uninsured.html ). It describes the demographics of the young adults (19 to 34) who are the largest single group of Americans without health insurance. The maps and bar graphs are worth looking at, since our portion of the Great Plains doesn't provide us a representative sample of the nation.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D
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Giving Online Resources a Human Touch
These days, most of us expect to be able to an answer any question with just a few clicks around the internet. This isn't an issue if you're looking for Elvis' birthday, but it can be a problem if you want to know the median household income in a small rural community. Unfortunately, the information that communities need in order to make educated decisions is often the hardest to find.
The Black Hills Knowledge Network is an online, library-based resource that aggregates and organizes information published by and about local entities such as government, media, nonprofits, businesses, and community groups. With support from the Bush Foundation and local funders, we work in partnership with SDSU's Rural Life and Census Data Center to make good data easily accessible to South Dakota residents. We started the project a few years ago, after being frustrated ourselves at the difficulty of finding reliable community information for many of our South Dakota communities.
Most people are convinced that data is a good thing, a necessary tool for assessment and evaluation. Yet many people are easily overwhelmed by statistics. Some folks aren't sure where to find good data or how to use it. With our partners, the Black Hills Knowledge Network is working with local nonprofits, local government, educators and businesses to help them feel more comfortable using community indicators in their daily lives.
A few months ago, we started doing 'BHKN Days' - an open house of sorts, to take our show on the road and demonstrate how key indicators can be used to improve the economy and quality of life in a given community. It's been a great way to strengthen relationships with our partner libraries, and we're looking forward to touring even more after the holidays. We've also been traveling across the state exhibiting at conferences and meeting with community groups to let them know about the resources available on the Black Hills Knowledge Network. Even though our focus is the Black Hills region, we want all South Dakotans to know that we provide community indicators for the entire state.
This data is gathered from the reliable sources including the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the US Census. Our two data partners - Wilder Research and SDSU's Rural Life and Census Data Center - are experts in the field of statistics. They make sure that all of the data is presented clearly and accurately, and help keep our numbers up-to-date.
If you want to be kept in the loop, go to our website and sign up for the weekly e-newsletter. We'll notify you of new and updated data releases, explain what the numbers mean, and help you make better use of community information.
By the way, Elvis was born on January 8, 1935!
Jessica Boyd,
Black Hills Knowledge Network
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What's the Median Age in Your County?
Here's a link to a quick, easily used interactive map that will show you any US county's median age. It's fast, I like it, and it is worth bookmarking.
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The State of US Health
I ran across an article that listed Perry County, Kentucky, as having the lowest female life expectancy in the nation. Articles on low life expectancy intrigue me, because I've spent more than a few hours pointing out the errors in the repeated myth that life expectancy on the Pine Ridge is lower than third-world countries, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. I wanted to see what's happening in Perry County. Somebody has to have the lowest life expectancy . . . but mathematics tops legends.
Skipping the story, I went to the data (https://cloud.ihme.washington.edu/public.php?service=files&t=a47c549942a9b17cac79f9fb95afa19c&path=//Data ). It provided me with a great spreadsheet, listing life expectancies, both female and male, every five years from 1985 to 2010. The report, from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, is "The state of US Health:Innovations, Insights, and recommendations." It is 96 pages, so it takes a bit of determined reading - but it's worth it. Kentucky really didn't fare well - the women in Perry County really did have the lowest life expectancies, while Owsley County Kentucky had the nation's fattest men. Since my onsite experience in Kentucky is limited to Louisville and Churchill Downs, I have no idea if those facts connect with each other. It looks like McDowell County, West Virginia, is no place for long male life expectancy - 63.7 years in 2010 (Our own Shannon County, on the Pine Ridge Reservation logs in at 68.8 - the same as Fall River). The lowest percentage of obese men occurs in San Francisco.
South Dakota doesn't have any of the top ten healthiest counties in the US - but we don't have any in the bottom ten, either. This report, and the spreadsheet accompanying it, is worth downloading and reading.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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Marriage and Divorce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released "Marriage and divorce: patterns by gender, race, and educational attainment" in October. (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/pdf/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.pdf). It's been a topic of interest for me for over 30 years - I've long suspected that my father-in-law, with his record of eight marriages, personally inflated the nation's divorce statistics. Well, a couple dozen guys with 7 divorces behind them could alter divorce statistics in a state the size of South Dakota anyway.
The article explains that "Marriage patterns differed markedly by age at marriage and by educational attainment. College-educated men
and women married at older ages compared with their counterparts who had fewer years of schooling. About equal proportions of men and women who received a college degree married by age 46, 88 percent for men and 90 percent for women. Men and women who did not complete high school were less likely to marry than were men and women with more education. "Another observation was "they found that high earnings capacity increases the probability of marriage and decreases the probability of divorce for young men, but decreases the probability of marriage for young women and has no effect on the likelihood of divorce."
I can't see how the study explains my father-in-law.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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Measuring The Decline in Employment Dynamics
Henry R. Hyatt and James R. Spletzer have published "The recent decline in employment dynamics" in the IZA Journal for Economics
( http://www.izajole.com/content/pdf/2193-8997-2-5.pdf). The abstract does a good job of describing their findings: "We document and attempt to explain the recent decline in employment dynamics in the U.S. We have four major empirical findings. First, each measure exhibits a "stairstep" pattern, with the declines concentrated in recessions and little increase during subsequent expansions. Second, changes in the composition of workers and businesses can explain only a small amount of the decline. Third, any explanation for the decline in job creation and job destruction will account for no more than one-third of the decline in hires and separations. Fourth, the decline in hires and separations is driven by the disappearance of short-duration jobs.
It's about 20 pages of reading, and is based on public data - primarily the Census, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Current Population Survey. The same data is available in a South Dakota home with an internet connection. It was interesting that they dismissed "job-lock" and "house-lock" as significant contributors to changed employment dynamics - job-locked being unable to leave a job because of employer sponsored health insurance, and house-lock is being trapped because the mortgage exceeds the house value.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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SD Crime and National Trends
The FBI has released Crime in the United States 2012. It's full of information on crimes (naturally) and the data goes to the state level. It's interesting - 84 percent of Illinois murders are accomplished with handguns, while just 14 percent of South Dakota murders are accomplished with handguns. The report also covers crime trends, the size of communities where crime is increasing or decreasing, and other interesting facts. Personally, it's a lot better to get crime data from this dispassionate source than sensationalized stories we hear on the news a lot of times. When we have the facts - and they're easy to obtain - we can better understand the issues. Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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Credit Suisse Research Institute released "Global Wealth Report 2013" in October. It's a bit more international than most of the reports I
reference, but it has some data that should make us think a bit. Moving from demography into wealth calculations isn't that big a jump. Worldwide, the report says that we're looking at $51,600 of wealth per adult.
US wealth is 54 percent higher than it was in 2008 - and actually at a new height. In Japan, things aren't so good, with personal wealth down 20 percent. The biggest percentage rise in net wealth was in Libya, followed by Mexico.
Chapter two starts with "This chapter looks at the pattern of wealth ownership across individuals, examining not only the top echelons of wealth holders, but also the often neglected middle and bottom sections of the wealth pyramid. Two-thirds of adults in the world have wealth below USD 10,000 and together account for merely 3% of global wealth, while the 32 million dollar millionaires own 41% of all assets." That's kind of impressive, when a quarter section less than a mile from my home just sold for $9,000 per acre. A page later, they describe those "32 million US dollar millionaires, a group that comprises less than 1% of the world's adult population, yet collectively holds 41% of global household wealth. Within this group we estimate that 98,700 individuals are worth more than USD 50 million, and 33,900 are worth over USD 100 million."
A chart on the following page shows that 42% of the world's US dollar millionaires are in the United States, and the paragraph alongside explains that Japan lost 1.2 million millionaires in 2011 and 2012. On page 46, I learned that the average US adult has a net worth of $300,000. When I go back to the statement that "two-thirds of the adults in the world have wealth below USD 10,000", it does show the difference between being at the median (basically the definition of mediocre) and being average. The article is 64 pages at http://images.smh.com.au/file/2013/10/09/4815797/cs_global_wealth_report_2013_WEB_low%2520pdf.pdf?rand=1381288140715 and well worth reading.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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Hard Times and Home Ownership
The Population Reference Bureau has an October Article "The Growing Owner/Renter Gap in Affordable
Housing in the U.S." (http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2013/us-owners-renters-housing.aspx).
It begins with the observation that "Home prices are lower today than they were during the peak of the housing boom. Mortgage rates, while rising, are low by historic standards." That's the good news. On the other hand, they describe some of the differences between home owners and renters. This table, taken from the article, gives a quick glimpse of the situation, but the article won't take long to read.
Percent of Owners and Renters With High Housing Cost Burden*
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1999
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2007
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2011
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2012
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Owners
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22.0
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30.6
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29.9
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27.4
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Renters
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39.9
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49.3
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53.4
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52.0
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*Households paying at least 30 percent of income on housing costs
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Census and American Community Survey.
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Attention
All
Students!
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If you want some "hands on experience" working with demographic data, we have just the opportunity for you! This Spring Semester the Data Center is offering an Internship for students to help collect, compile and analyze data. Excited? Be sure to sign up for Soc 494 S02 (Internship listed with Dr. McCurry) when enrolling for classes. Enhance your resume, get practical experience, work with a fun group of demographers and get college credit for it!
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On Migration: South Dakota and the United States of America
Thomas Cooke has released "All tied up: Tied staying and tied migration within the United States, 1997 to 2007" (http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol29/30/29-30.pdf). Tied migration occurs when one member of a family migrates because he or she is tied to another's migration. While Family migration literature usually focuses on the trailing wife, this study provides a method for identifying tied migrants and for directly measuring the causes of tied migration.
In the face of conventional wisdom, Cooke finds that tied migration is a relatively rare event for married women and that men are just as likely to be tied migrants as women. Tied staying has been more difficult to research than tied moving, but Cooke's work provides a method to identify tied staying and to assess its frequency.
This article may be useful in examining South Dakota's "population loss" counties. It's worth reading for folks interested in getting a better handle on migration.
Mike McCurry, Ph.D.
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SAVE THE DATES
2014 Demography
Conference
Tues-Thursday,
June 10-12, 2014.
(On the campus of South Dakota
State University).
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Prekchya Singh |
Eric Guthrie Data Center Staff |
J.L. Jackson |
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South Dakota State Data Center Advisory Council & Affiliates
BIA -- Great Plains Regional Office
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Clark County
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Department of Sociology
and Rural Studies, SDSU
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East River Electric Power Coop
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First Distric Association
of Local Governments
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Northeast Council of Governments
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Sitting Bull College
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South Dakota Rural Enterprise
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Black Hills Council of Local
Governments
Black Hills Knowledge Network
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
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Northern State University
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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Affiliates Teleconference: Thursday, January 23, 2014; 11a.m. to 1p.m.; (605) 688-4651
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Stay Connected
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We hope you enjoy this issue of the Rural Life Census Data Center newsletter. If you have any news tips or items that you would like to see included in a future newsletter, let us know at: 605-688-4899 or email: [email protected] Come see us on Facebook and let us know you were there!
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