I want to monitor them remotely over the Web, to get a sense of what is going on in those cities that might inspire us here in Lancaster, or cause us to think differently about ourselves.

What cities do you consider to be comparable to Lacaster? Ideal cities will be of similar size, age, and climate.

I think there are a fair number of people in Lancaster with a sense of what is going on in Philadelphia, New York, and even more distant cultural centers like Los Angeles and Austin. Those people are thinking about how some of the things that are done in those cities might be done here.

I would like to contribute to the conversation by looking at what is going on in less well-known cities that are more similar to ours. Any suggestions of towns to use as that sort of benchmark?

As you can see, the Latino population of Lancaster city has increased from 21 percent to 39 percent over the course of two decades.

What does this mean? Look to the Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board’s Latinos in Lancaster County Initiative for lots of great insight from researchers and from our community’s Latino leaders.

The situation has gotten serious over the past fifty years, as Robert Lieberman points out in the current issue of Foreign Affairs:

The wealthiest Americans, among them presumably the very titans of global finance whose misadventures brought about the financial meltdown, got richer. And not just a little bit richer; a lot richer. In 2009, the average income of the top five percent of earners went up, while on average everyone else’s income went down. This was not an anomaly but rather a continuation of a 40-year trend of ballooning incomes at the very top and stagnant incomes in the middle and at the bottom. The share of total income going to the top one percent has increased from roughly eight percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today.

When we talk about the income of the top one percent, we’re talking about individuals making more than $1.2 million a year.

It’s hard to comprehend those kind of numbers. One percent of people getting twenty percent of the income? It’s worse when you realize that’s only income, not wealth. As of 2007, ten percent of the U.S. population held eighty percent of all financial assets.

I think most of us automatically think of the richest people in America as abstractions. We’ll only see their faces if we see their photos in Forbes. But what if these financial elite are our neighbors? How many of the “richest of the rich” live in Lancaster County?

In my research so far, it’s impossible to tell. There’s really only one definitive statistic: at least five thousand Lancaster County households are among the richest five percent of American households, in terms of income.

The latest research on actual wealth (as opposed to just income) to come from the U.S. Census Bureau is dated 2004, and even then the numbers are only broken down to the state level, not into counties. We know that in 2004, there were 86,000 individuals in Pennsylvania with more than $1.5 million in financial assets. If those individuals were evenly distributed throughout the state population, in 2004 there would have been 3,464 of them in Lancaster County. Further, if we want to consider only individuals worth more than $20 million, in 2004 there would have been seventy-six such individuals in Lancaster County.

Does anyone have any better data on these questions? If not, do my very rough guesses pass the “sniff test” for you? Are there thousands of multimillionaires among the half-million residents of Lancaster County?

There are a lot of statistics in the article that cannot be broken down to the local level, but there was one question I knew I could answer: What percentage of adults in Lancaster County were married in 1960, compared to 2008?

I asked this question because it was surprising to me to learn that, nationwide, only about half of all adults are currently married, down from more than two thirds in 1960. (We’re counting adults as individuals 20 years of age or older.) I was curious to know what those numbers were for Lancaster County, to compare how we stack up to the nation as a whole. Here’s the answer.

Table: Percentage of Adults Who Are Currently Married

It’s uncanny how Lancaster County has remained exactly ten percent higher in this regard over the past half-century. We may be moving slower, but we’re following the same trend as the nation as a whole.

This leads me to a reader poll: Is marriage obsolete? When Time asked this question in 1978, “when the divorce rate was much higher than it is today,” 28% said it was. In this new study, that number has grown to 40%. What do you say?

[poll id="14"]

The counties that contributed the most trees to the harvest? Carbon, Lycoming, Schuylkill, and our neighbor, York.

1.2 Million Christmas trees were cut down in PA in 2007. (click photo to enlarge)

The upside? Since nearly all harvested Christmas trees come from tree farms, it’s likely that as many evergreen trees were planted in Pennsylvania in 2008.

Season’s Greetings from your favorite local-data-providing blog. Thanks for being a reader.

The website launches an all-out marketing campaign to get people to fill out their Census questionnaires next April. The population is counted every 10 years, and the numbers are used to reapportion seats in Congress and redraw state and local political districts. They also are used to determine where more than $400 billion in federal money should go every year.

The government is bracing for a lower response rate to the questionnaires than in 2000, partly because of a larger and more diverse population. The website is available in Spanish, and sample questionnaires can be viewed in 59 languages.

This effort for Spanish-language inclusion is important to Lancaster city where, according to a December 2007 report from the county Workforce Investment Board, “it is very probably that [by the end of 2022], Latinos will surpass the White non-Latino population.” At the time of the report, 18% of Latinos in the county spoke English “not well or not at all.”

I’ll be following the census effort and the resulting data closely, so if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up to receive this blog by e-mail, add the RSS feed to your reader, or bookmark the data and trends page.

The movement is much more subtle when looking at just the first six months of 2009:

What do you see in these charts?

Here’s a snapshot of the trending of Lancaster County births since 1994.

Lancaster County, PA birth rate, 1994 through 2008

From 2000 to 2008, Lancaster County has grown 6.7 percent. During that time period, Chester (13.4 percent) and York (11.2 percent) were the only Pennsylvania counties to grow faster.

Lancaster’s growth rate this decade has been higher than predicted. The Pennsylvania State Data Center projected Lancaster County’s 2010 population would be just 498,465. New data certainly calls into question the Data Center’s projections for Lancaster County in 2020 (pop. 526,194) and 2030 (pop. 553,293). Is it possible that the county will top 600,000 in the next decade?
Sources: The Pennsylvania State Data Center (pdf) and the U.S. Census Bureau

Lancaster city, Pennsylvania, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau

The U.S. Census Bureau released new data today as part of its American Community Survey program, which tracks information for certain areas between 10-year censuses. This is the first time Lancaster city, with a relatively small population (55,029 of us) was included in such an extensive Census Bureau project in the in-between years. (New York City, for instance, is always included in such studies. This time around it revealed that the number of whites in Harlem has tripled.)

The data reveals some shocking trends for our city. I compared the newly-released data against data from the 2000 census (which reflected reality as of 1999). To do this, I converted 1999 dollars into 2007 dollars (by multiplying by 1.24438087, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).

We all know that the current economic recession is hurting everyone. What we didn’t realize was how badly we here in Lancaster city were getting hit already.

Household & Per Capita Income

Lancaster city – As of 2007, median household income was $31,599. In 1999 it was $37,045 (adjusted to 2007 dollars). That means household income dropped 15% between 1999 and 2007. In that same time, per capita income dropped 9%: in 2007, per capita income was $15,813. In 1999, it was $17,365.

Lancaster County – As of 2007, median household income was $63,499. In 1999 it was $56,628. When you tack on the suburbs, median household income grew 12% within the county. But, county-wide, per capita income dipped by 0.6%:  in 2007, per capita income was $25,214. In 1999, it was $25,382.

Question: What do you make of the fact that in the county, median household income significantly grew, while per capita income slightly declined?

Lancaster city is not alone in hearing bad news: Every metro area in Northeast Ohio (in some ways a peer region) saw such a decline. In Wooster, median household income was down 20%.

Home Values

Lancaster city – City homes declined 20% in value. The median home value in 2007 was $71,300. In 1999, it was $88,724 (in 2007 dollars).

Lancaster County – County homes increased 14% in value. The median home value in 2007 was $169,500. In 1999 it was $148,454.

This disparity in property value trending obviously has massive tax implications. Consider also the difference in aging infrastructure: 63.1% of city homes were built prior to World War II. In the county homes that old account for only 24.3% of the market. In the city, 3.6% of homes were built in the past 17 years. In the county, that number is 23.3%.

Households with Income over $100,000

Lancaster city – In 2007, there were 1,241 households earning $100k or more, representing 5.9% of city households. In 1999, there were 663 measured using 1999 dollars), about 3.1% of households.

Lancaster County - In 2007, there were 30,711 households with income $100k or more, representing 16.7% of county households. In 1999 there were 16,799 (measured using 1999 dollars), about 9.8% of households.

Below the Poverty Line

Even before the economic recession, poverty levels were increasing in both the city and the county.

Lancaster city – As of 2007, 25.4% of individuals in the city were living below the poverty line, up from 21.2% in 1999. Fully 65% of single-mother households (no husband present) with children 5 years old or younger were living below the poverty line, up from 54.9% in 1999.

Lancaster County – As of 2007, 9.1% of individuals in the county were living below the poverty line, up from 7.8% in 1999. Among single-mother households (no husband present), with children 5 years old or younger, 52.5% were living below the poverty line in 2007, up from 43.7% in 1999.

Top Industries

Lancaster city:
In 1999, the top 3 industries (in terms of number of people employed) were:

1. Manufacturing (23.7%)
2. Educational, health and social services (19.9%)
3. Retail trade (13.2%)

…In 2007, the top 3 industries were:

1. Educational, health and social services (21.1%)
2. Manufacturing (17.3%)
3. Professional, scientific, and management, and administrative and waste management services (12.7%)

Lancaster County:
In 1999, the top 3 industries were:

1. Manufacturing (22.5%)
2. Educational, health and social services (18.2%)
3. Retail trade (13.0%)

…In 2007, the top 3 industries were:

1. Educational services, and health care and social assistance (20.2%)
2. Manufacturing (18.7%)
3. Retail trade (12.0%)

It’s great to see the city’s #3 industry as of 2007.

Commuting

Because I am smug enough to highlight these stats, I will. As of 2007, 11% (2,456) of us city dwellers were walking to work. That was only true of 3.5% of the county population. Another 5.2% of city dwellers were taking public transit, as opposed to 1.3% county-wide.

What’s your response to this data? Lancaster city is more vulnerable to the effects of the recession than we previously realized. Is there any way the 2010 census data can possibly look even a little bit better?