Research

In her post “How old is old? Is 80 the new 65?”, Susan discussed how increases in longevity have dramatically increased the typical years lived post-retirement.  The average 65-year-old retiree is now expected to survive until age 84.  These changes mean that retirees need increasing amounts of money to afford a comfortable retirement and provide […]

The Pew Hispanic Center recently released a report about Mexican immigration to the United States.  The report showed that net migration from Mexico has fallen to zero. Here are some interesting facts that the researchers found using demographic data from both the United States and Mexico: In the last four decades, millions of Mexicans migrated […]

Looking for the most current occupation information? See the Trailblazers: Career and Technical Education in Virginia blog. Every two years the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics produces a new set of national employment projections for 750 different occupations organized into 22 major groups. They also produce a broad set of supporting materials, from academic and […]

The vote on the proposed Amendment One in North Carolina, which defines marriage in the NC state constitution as between one man and one woman, and bans any other type of domestic legal union, such as civil unions and domestic partnership, passed yesterday. This result has been all over the news today, and it might […]

Several weeks ago, I posted an article on the importance of humanizing data so that people better understand the stories that lie behind the numbers.  Sometimes these data can help us uncover profound truths about ourselves as well as provide insights into society as a whole.The internet has been all a buzz about the recent release […]

The Weldon Cooper Center released a report today examining geographic and demographic changes in Virginia’s black population over time: Blacks in Virginia: Demographic Trends in Historical Context. One topic in the report is the continued residential segregation of blacks in Virginia’s big metropolitan centers. I thought it would be interesting, as well, to have a […]

Speaking of infographics, I’ve been playing with the college completion data I highlighted previously. Below is a star chart (aka radar chart, spider chart) of data on Virginia’s 4-year public colleges.Each spoke represents a different piece of data, and the length of the spoke conveys the magnitude of that data for each university. The colleges […]

Over the past few weeks I’ve been watching closely the recent efforts by the National Journal to prominently showcase stories, polls, and news events that highlight demography and population change. With a particular focus on politics, the “Next America” project, beginning with the articles written by Editorial Director Ronald Brownstein, is an “unprecedented effort to explore the […]

I read quite a few blogs about demographics and statistics.  One of my favorites is FlowingData, which is written by Nathan Yau, a PhD candidate in statistics at UCLA.  He focuses mainly on how researchers use data visualization to convey their results to non-experts.  Nathan recently posted links to two really neat infographics.1) Pay gap […]

This year marks the end of bank-provided tax refund anticipation loans.  Refund anticipation loans (RALs) are short-term loans with high interest and fees that are based on a filer’s expected tax refund (minus tax preparation fees, loan fees, and interest).  RALs provide access to tax refund money about 7-9 days earlier than if the filer […]