Neighborhood Demographics Influence Demand for Housing, Goods, and Services

Neighborhood demographics are the numbers describing population characteristics of the folks in your community. Typically such numbers are used in grant applications, long-range planning, market analysis for businesses, detection of trends over time, and comparisons of places.

So it’s fitting that community leaders understand something about who lives in the community, whether your setting is suburban, urban, or rural. Most of us overestimate the numbers of people who are similar to us in our vicinity. An exception is when we become fear-driven and feel we are being overrun by people who are different from us.

Where to Obtain Neighborhood Demographics Data

In general, the major source of neighborhood demographics information for the U.S. is the Census Bureau. Other countries will have some office that collects population information and estimates. The United Nations does so internationally.

Private businesses also collect information that is particularly relevant to other businesses, but frequently there is a charge for that information. If you need specialized information, sometimes categorized by lifestyles with cute names, it may be worthwhile to pay for that information. But most community groups should start with the basics and purchase information only if they have a particular and targeted information need.

If you live in a city or town large enough to have a planning department office, make that your first stop. Not only will they be familiar with how to find the neighborhood demographics data you like, they also could help you make generalizations and interpretations about it. If there’s no planning department, a public library is another possible source. If you have an extension agent, they should be able to assist you both with finding and understanding data as well.

Now there are many places on the Internet to find the latest information. The Census Bureau now not only allows you to view data, but also provides a number of opportunities to create specific tables showing only the neighborhood demographics you want for the geographies you want. The American Fact Finder and Current Population Survey parts of their website are particularly useful in this regard.

The American Community Survey of the Census Bureau provides annual population estimates for areas of 65,000 population or more. Annual population calculations or other neighborhood demographics in smaller towns and cities often must be computed using local school, utility, and housing move-in information. The American Community Survey also replaced the "long form" of the Census with detailed periodic surveys not necessarily geared to the 10-year cycle.

Other nonprofit groups sometimes package Census data in particular ways to enable it to tell a story. An example is the KIDS COUNT compilation by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

For privacy reasons the Census Bureau often suppresses particular neighborhood demographics that may be of interest to your group. You'll find it impossible to calculate exactly how much money your next door neighbor makes, for instance. But you can learn many patterns about age, sex, who’s moving into your neighborhood, income, housing age, household composition, and race and ethnic background.

The Census Bureau annually estimates births, deaths, and migration into and out of states and counties. These become important when you want to compare your own neighborhood demographics with those larger areas to see how to evaluate your own numbers.

Note that Census Bureau procedures have changed considerably over the last 20 years, so if you had been familiar with the old paper reports, you might have to update yourself on the sophisticated new web-based material and its limitations. Also it's important to note that the old Census "long form" information reports are now updated annually in American Community Survey and American FactFinder. The American Housing Survey now is updated every odd year on a national basis and recently has been providing detailed metro area information every four or five years.

I think it's fair to say that the Census Bureau is somewhat in flux right now, as they adapt admirably in many instances to the electronic revolution. But skyrocketing costs of manual data collection and increasing resistance to compliance have challenged their traditional ways of collecting data.

Of course if your are particularly interested in minority and low-income communities, many advocates will argue that these are the folks who are undercounted in the Census. Extreme mobility, homelessness, and fear of the immigration agents also may cause undercounting or inaccuracies in your neighborhood demographics.

The Internal Revenue Service charges for its data, but my experience was that it was well worth it when we were tracking movements of households into and out of counties within a metropolitan area. For a fee, the IRS also provides information on estimated number of households and persons in a zip code. This is an alternative check on the Census Bureau when you’re not trusting their numbers for some reason.

The Office of Immigration Services in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tracks immigration data. For income-related and employment data, the Bureau of Economic Analysis also is part of the Census Bureau. Use of this information in detail to determine your areas's economic base is described on economic base and location quotient pages.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates metro area median incomes to determine some of its housing program income requirements. The Social Security Administration tracks income for the self-employed. And the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has some great chart-making and map-making capabilities for those in more rural areas. The Federal Reserve collects data on housing finance. On and on it goes.

You also can determine commuting times (called journey to work), people before the official poverty level, cost of living in various cities including yours, sales prices of houses and rental costs, and computed data, such as housing affordability, which would be a combination of those housing purchase prices, rental costs, and income.

Housing characteristics technically wouldn't be considered part of neighborhood demographics, in case you're wondering. But most groups use the same information sources on housing at about the same time they are studying neighborhood demographics. So we mention the housing data for your convenience.

An excellent collection of links for almost every kind of neighborhood demographics information, including those mentioned above, is found on DataPlace, a KnowledgePlex® website. This includes the various Census data sources.

Locally you may find information from your utility companies and school district. They may not share information directly with a neighborhood or community organization, but in many cases they will deliver that data to a local government upon request.

A developing trend is called hyperlocal media, where trained or untrained journalists may cover an underreported geographic area. One organization that has been grouped under this umbrella, but also which is related to the broad question of statistics, is EveryBlock, which provides data such as public records and even restaurant inspections in major American cities.

And if your population is young and hip, you can try Internet-based surveys to determine detailed population characteristics, if you have a piece or two of hard data to enable you to judge what percentage of people in the neighborhood have returned the survey. You'll find various on-line survey mechanisms that cost little to nothing to use.

You also can collect your own useful information, you know, as detailed on the neighborhood planning page.

Incidentally, we were asked how to obtain traffic counts. Ask the government that controls the road--the state department of transportation for federal or state roads, or a county, municipal, or township organization, depending on who built and owns the road. If you don't know, ask one level of government and they can refer you to the right entity.

Even considering all these sources, be prepared that you may not find exactly the information you'd like for exactly the geographic configuration that you need.

So What Do I Do With All These Neighborhood Statistics?

When I was a municipal planner, the typical experience was that when a neighborhood leader would come to obtain Census tables, they would leave with 20 or 25 pages of material. Then about a week later the panicked phone call would come. The essence would be "but what does this all mean?"

Here are the questions to ask when you have lots of data and not too much experience in "reading" it:

• Over time, is this number going up or down? (Remember when obtaining Census data to try to find comparable data for 10 years earlier, or one year earlier if you’re using annual estimates. Even longer comparisons may be useful to show trends.)

• Compared to my entire city, is my neighborhood higher or lower? By what percentage?

• Compared to my state, is my neighborhood higher or lower? How about the nation?

• If you're looking at block-level data, how do the various blocks in your neighborhood compare to one another? What factors account for this? Are there dormitories, prisons, nursing homes, group homes, or other "out of sight, out of mind" groups living in your community that are skewing the numbers?

• How are we doing on key indicators?

Important to note for the neighborhood would be an aging population, because that means that the neighborhood will turn over to new occupants relatively soon, so you would want to be sure that you are market-ready for the tastes of younger buyers.

Generally home ownership as compared to a high number of renters is a good thing. The recent foreclosure crisis might call that generalization into question, but certainly over the long haul, that is historically true.

Are the people who moved in during the last 10 years significantly different in any demographic characteristic from the people who have lived in the neighborhood for more than 20 years? If so, you know where you're headed. Determine if you like it or not, and what predictions your local business community should be making on the neighborhood demographics trends.

More to the point, will your housing stock accommodate the size of families that are moving in? Are your houses too big, because now most of your people are “empty nesters”? If so, we predict an exodus next time energy costs spike.

Will your school district be thinking of closing schools because there are no little kids? If so, what’s your game plan (temporary or permanent) for those buildings?

Are wages staying stagnant over the years? If so, what would deferred housing maintenance mean to the community?

Are you finding a significant number of children living with the grandparents or with single parents? How is that relevant to the programming your local parks department or library does?

If people are moving away faster than they move in, where are they going? What does that tell you about their incomes, households sizes, tastes in housing, job market, or journey to work?

These are some examples of what you might learn if you get one of the numbers crunchers in your organization to take a look.

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