In this assignment, I chose to incorporate census data from geographic areas that were not completely similar in size, location, or climate. Along with the Buffalo-Niagara Falls MSA data that was required in this assignment, I have also chosen to use Honolulu, Hawaii, Columbus, Ohio, Erie, Pennsylvania, and Anchorage, Alaska MSA data. I have chosen to use Honolulu because Hawaii is more of a tropical location, and would figure the data to differ considerably from that of the other cities. The same applies for the use of Anchorage, but because of its frigid location in the far North. The use of Erie and Columbus is because they are fairly large, sort of "average" cities that could give a good comparison to that of the nation totals and averages.
There are quite a few pieces of information that I would consider major findings, and there are also a few things that I just found to be interesting. Below are ten of these findings, each of which is bulleted. .
Large percentage of one person households.
I am surprised to see that in these cities and the nation as a whole, the percentage of households in which only one person lives is around 20%-25%. It just seems that there are almost all multi-person households, not just 3 out of every 4.
Large increase in population in Columbus and relation to Anchorage's.
First, I am surprised to see that Columbus increased its population by over 160,000 people between 1990 and 2000. Then I look at the percent of increase of all of the cities and see that Anchorage, although increasing population by only 33,945, the percent of its increase was greater than that of Columbus by over 3%.
Anchorage, Alaska is nearly all urbanized.
I would have thought Anchorage to be more rural. When I think of Alaska, I think of it being wide open with people living fairly distant from each other. I did not expect 98% of the population to live in the city.
Group quarters was lower than expected.