Black population is also growing. In , That is up from Another 2. A growing share are foreign born, the population is aging though some segments are significantly younger , and a growing share are college graduates. These trends and more are explored in this report. Findings for all Black people, non-Hispanic single-race Black people, non-Hispanic multiracial Black people and Black Hispanics are shown separately. A downloadable spreadsheet of findings is also available.
Racial identity — as measured by the U. The census has drastically changed since its first administration in Then, only two racial categories were included: free which mostly included White people and slaves who were mostly enslaved Black people. The Census Bureau has modified terms used to refer to people of non-White racial identities throughout the years, in accordance with the politics and sensibilities of the times.
Respondents choose their racial response categories themselves. This was not true for over a century of censuses. However, starting that year, some respondents could self-identify, or chose their own racial category.
Self-identification was expanded in subsequent censuses to include virtually all respondents. Additionally, starting in , census data included information from the entire population on Hispanic or Latino ethnic identity in addition to their racial identification. And the census marked the first time respondents were able to include themselves in more than one racial category; prior to that year, multiracial respondents could select only one racial category. Multiracial Americans were one of the population groups that were more likely to change their racial identification between the two decennial census years.
The age structure of the Black population has also changed since As of , the median age of single-race, non-Hispanic Black people is 35, compared with 30 in The median age for the entire Black population is 32, though it varies across the differing identities among the Black population.
Among Black Hispanic people, it is 22 years. Meanwhile, multiracial Black people are the youngest group, with a median age of Black population are members of Generation Z — born between and and ages 7 to 22 in A further one-in-ten were under the age of 7 that year.
Black population is age 22 or younger. Regionally, the share of the national Black population living in the South has grown. Meanwhile, somewhat higher shares lived the Midwest and Northeast in than in The growth of the Black population in the South suggests a departure from previous Black migration patterns. The first half of the 20th century featured increasing shares of the population residing in regions of the U.
Consequently, each decade featured decreasing shares of the Black population living in the South. Starting in , shares of the Black population who live in the South have grown. With more than 3. Florida has the second largest population at 3. Other top states of residence include New York 3. Although the top five states of residence have remained the same for Black people as in , the order shifted substantially, with New York and California dropping from the two largest to fourth and fifth in Employers in firms like Honda now require employees who can read and do math problems at the ninth-grade level at a minimum.
And yet the NAEP math tests, for example, revealed that only 22 percent of African-American high school seniors but 58 percent of their white classmates were numerate enough for such firms to consider hiring them.
And in reading, 47 percent of whites in but just 18 percent of African Americans could handle the printed word well enough to be employable in a modern automobile plant. Murnane and Levy found a clear impact on income. Not years spent in school but strong skills made for high long-term earnings. Why is there such a glaring racial gap in levels of educational attainment? It is not easy to say. The gap, in itself, is very bad news, but even more alarming is the fact that it has been widening in recent years.
In , the average African-American year-old could read no better than the typical white child who was six years younger. The racial gap in math in was 4. By the late s, however, the picture was notably brighter. Black students in their final year of high school were only 2. Had the trends of those years continued, by today black pupils would be performing about as well as their white classmates.
Instead, black progress came to a halt, and serious backsliding began. Between and , the racial gap in reading grew from 2. In both science and writing, the racial gap has widened by a full year. There is no obvious explanation for this alarming turnaround. The early gains doubtless had much to do with the growth of the black middle class, but the black middle class did not suddenly begin to shrink in the late s.
The poverty rate was not dropping significantly when educational progress was occurring, nor was it on the increase when the racial gap began once again to widen.
The huge rise in out-of-wedlock births and the steep and steady decline in the proportion of black children growing up with two parents do not explain the fluctuating educational performance of African-American children. It is well established that children raised in single-parent families do less well in school than others, even when all other variables, including income, are controlled. But the disintegration of the black nuclear family—presciently noted by Daniel Patrick Moynihan as early as —was occurring rapidly in the period in which black scores were rising, so it cannot be invoked as the main explanation as to why scores began to fall many years later.
Some would argue that the initial educational gains were the result of increased racial integration and the growth of such federal compensatory education programs as Head Start.
But neither desegregation nor compensatory education seems to have increased the cognitive skills of the black children exposed to them. In any case, the racial mix in the typical school has not changed in recent years, and the number of students in compensatory programs and the dollars spent on them have kept going up.
What about changes in the curriculum and patterns of course selection by students? And there is good reason to believe that taking tougher courses contributed to the temporary rise in black test scores. But this explanation, too, nicely fits the facts for the period before the late s but not the very different picture thereafter. We are left with three tentative suggestions. First, the increased violence and disorder of inner-city lives that came with the introduction of crack cocaine and the drug-related gang wars in the mids most likely had something to do with the reversal of black educational progress.
Chaos in the streets and within schools affects learning inside and outside the classroom. In addition, an educational culture that has increasingly turned teachers into guides who help children explore whatever interests them may have affected black academic performance as well.
As educational critic E. Hirsch, Jr. That will be particularly true of those students who come to school most academically disadvantaged—those whose homes are not, in effect, an additional school. The deficiencies of American education hit hardest those most in need of education. And yet in the name of racial sensitivity, advocates for minority students too often dismiss both common academic standards and standardized tests as culturally biased and judgmental.
Such advocates have plenty of company. Christopher Edley, Jr. Closing that skills gap is obviously the first task if black advancement is to continue at its once-fast pace. On the map of racial progress, education is the name of almost every road. Raise the level of black educational performance, and the gap in college graduation rates, in attendance at selective professional schools, and in earnings is likely to close as well.
Moreover, with educational parity, the whole issue of racial preferences disappears. Insurance Coverage : In , Also in , Finally, Health : According to Census Bureau projections, the life expectancies at birth for blacks are For non-Hispanic whites the projected life expectancies are Knowledge Center.
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