A Temporal Study of Demographic Change in Foreign-Born and African- American Populations Using Historical Census Data, 1930-2000

Caitlin Sargent - Spring 2008

While population concentrations on the county scale vary, spatial patterns in the distribution of America’s Black and foreign-born populations over time show relative consistency at the regional scale. There is little overlap of the two populations at any time. The foreign-born population is consistently concentrated in counties in the North and the West, while the Black population is concentrated in counties in the Deep South.

The analysis draws on historical census data from the NHGIS project. To study the whole country, county level data was drawn on and boundary changes were accommodated by estimating population statistics for 2000 county boundaries for each census year using the Cascading Density Weighting method developed by Schroeder (forthcoming). Data for Alaska, and the 1900-1920 censuses proved problematic, so the analysis was restricted to the continental United States, 1930-2000. Additionally, the 1960 foreign-born data was incomplete due to censorship of counties with low counts, so estimates for counties were derived through interpolation of data from neighboring census years.

 

NEXT

 

[1] Schroeder, Jonathan P. Forthcoming. “Visualizing Patterns in Long Term Urban Population Trends.” Ph.D. Thesis. University of Minnesota.