2010 US Census and Kansas

Last Thursday, the US Census Bureau released the first set of numbers from the 2010 Census for sub-state areas. The data set is called PL 94 data, because it is release in accordance with Public Law 94-171, which basically says that the Census Bureau has until one year after the census to send redistricting data to the states. This data will be used to update Kansas’ legislative districts to reflect the changes in the state’s population since 2000.

As this set is intended for redistricting purposes, it is limited in scope. It contains the total population count, count by race and Hispanic origin, voting age and housing unit counts down to small levels of geography.

Although there were no real surprises in the data, it is interesting, and somewhat disconcerting, to see what most people thought was true. Kansas, on the whole, grew over the decade by about 6%. However, most individual counties (79 out of 105) lost population while only 26 counties gained people. Most incorporated cities (432 out of 627) lost population as well. This map shows the population change in counties. The green counties gained population. The yellow counties lost less than 5% of their population, the orange counties lost 5-11.5%, and the red counties lost 11.6-22.1% of their population.



The next batch of numbers to be released is scheduled for this summer, sometime between June and August. Those will include all race groups, all ages, sex, and housing ownership. The 2010 Decennial Census did not ask any questions about income, those stats can be found in the American Community Survey.


You can find more data at:

State Data Center of Kansas
http://www.kslib.info/sdc/index.html

American FactFinder
http://factfinder.census.gov

U.S. Census Bureau
http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn63.html

Article contact: Peter Haxton
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