Census data another sign economy has bottomed out

HOPE YEN

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — More young adults are leav­ing their par­ents’ homes to take a chance with col­lege or a job. Across the nation, peo­ple are on the move again after putting their lives on hold and stay­ing put. Once-sharp declines in births are lev­el­ing off, and poverty is slowing.

A new snap­shot of cen­sus data pro­vides soci­o­log­i­cal backup for what eco­nomic indi­ca­tors were already sug­gest­ing: that the nation is in a ten­ta­tive, frag­ile recovery.

“We may be see­ing the begin­ning of the Amer­i­can family’s recov­ery from the Great Reces­sion,” said Andrew Cher­lin, a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­ogy and pub­lic pol­icy at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity. He pointed in par­tic­u­lar to the upswing in mobil­ity and to young men mov­ing out of their par­ents’ homes, both signs that more young adults were test­ing out job prospects.

“It could be the mod­est num­ber of new jobs or sim­ply the belief that the worst is over,” Cher­lin said.

The new 2011 cen­sus fig­ures released Thurs­day show progress in an eco­nomic recov­ery that tech­ni­cally began in mid-2009. The annual sur­vey, sup­ple­mented with unpub­lished gov­ern­ment fig­ures as of March 2012, cov­ers a year in which unem­ploy­ment fell mod­estly from 9.6 per­cent to 8.9 percent.

Not all is well, how­ever. The job­less rate remains high at 8.1 per­cent. While hous­ing sales have more recently gained, home own­er­ship last year dropped for a fifth straight year to 64.6 per­cent, the low­est in more than a decade, due to strin­gent financ­ing rules and a shift to rent­ing. More Amer­i­cans than ever are turn­ing to food stamps, while res­i­dents in hous­ing that is con­sid­ered “crowded” held steady at 1 per­cent, tied for the high­est since 2003.

Fresh eco­nomic data released Thurs­day added to the mixed pic­ture. The Con­fer­ence Board’s Index of Lead­ing Eco­nomic Indi­ca­tors, designed to fore­cast future eco­nomic activ­ity, dipped 0.1 per­cent in August after ris­ing 0.5 per­cent in July and drop­ping 0.5 per­cent in June. And the num­ber of Amer­i­cans seek­ing unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits fell only slightly last week.

Taken as a whole, how­ever, ana­lysts say the cen­sus data, which track chang­ing pat­terns in every­day life, pro­vide the lat­est evi­dence of a sta­bi­liz­ing U.S. econ­omy. Com­ing after the dev­as­tat­ing hous­ing bust in 2006, such a lev­el­ing off would mark an end to the longest and most per­ni­cious eco­nomic decline since World War II.

Richard Free­man, an econ­o­mist at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, said the data point to a “frag­ile recov­ery,” with the econ­omy still at risk of falling back into reces­sion, depend­ing in part on who is pres­i­dent and whether Con­gress averts a “fis­cal cliff” of deep gov­ern­ment spend­ing cuts and higher taxes in Jan­u­ary. “Given the sit­u­a­tion in the world econ­omy, we are doing bet­ter than many other coun­tries,” he said. “Gov­ern­ment poli­cies remain critical.”

The cen­sus fig­ures also show slow­ing growth in the foreign-born pop­u­la­tion, which increased to 40.4 mil­lion, or 13 per­cent of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion. Last year’s immi­gra­tion increase of 400,000 peo­ple was the low­est in a decade, reflect­ing a min­i­mal gain of Lati­nos after many Mex­i­cans already in the U.S. opted to return home. Some 11 mil­lion peo­ple are esti­mated to be in the U.S. illegally.

The bulk of new immi­grants are now higher-skilled work­ers from Asian coun­tries such as China and India, con­tribut­ing to increases in the foreign-born pop­u­la­tion in Cal­i­for­nia, New York, Illi­nois and New Jersey.

Income inequal­ity var­ied widely by region. The gap between rich and poor was most evi­dent in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, New York, Con­necti­cut, Louisiana and New Mex­ico, where immi­grant or minor­ity groups were more numer­ous. By county, Berke­ley in West Vir­ginia had the biggest jump in house­hold income inequal­ity over the past year, a result of fast sub­ur­ban growth just out­side the Washington-Baltimore region, where pock­ets of poor res­i­dents and newly arrived, afflu­ent com­muters live side by side.

As a whole, Amer­i­cans were slowly find­ing ways to get back on the move. About 12 per­cent of the nation’s pop­u­la­tion, or 36.5 mil­lion, moved to a new home, up from a record low of 11.6 per­cent in 2011.

Among young adults 25 to 29, the most mobile age group, moves also increased to 24.6 per­cent from a low of 24.1 per­cent in the pre­vi­ous year. Longer-distance moves, typ­i­cally for those seek­ing new careers in other regions of the coun­try, rose mod­estly from 3.4 per­cent to 3.8 percent.

Less will­ing to rely on par­ents, roughly 5.6 mil­lion Amer­i­cans ages 25–34, or 13.6 per­cent, lived with Mom and Dad, a decrease from 14.2 per­cent in the pre­vi­ous year. Young men were less likely than before to live with par­ents, down from 18.6 per­cent to 16.9 per­cent; young women liv­ing with par­ents edged higher to 10.4 per­cent, up from 9.7 percent.

The increases in mobil­ity coin­cide with mod­est improve­ments in the job mar­ket as well as increased school enroll­ment, espe­cially in col­lege and at advanced-degree levels.

Mar­riages dipped to a low of just 50.8 per­cent among adults 18 and over, com­pared with 57 per­cent in 2000. Among young adults 25–34, mar­riage was at 43.1 per­cent, also a new low, part of a longer-term cul­tural trend in which peo­ple are opt­ing to marry at later ages and often cohab­i­tate with a part­ner first.

Births, on the other hand, appeared to be com­ing back after years of steep declines. In 2011, the num­ber of births dipped by 55,000, or 1 per­cent, to 4.1 mil­lion, the small­est drop since the pre-recession peak in 2008, accord­ing to Ken­neth John­son, a soci­ol­ogy pro­fes­sor and senior demog­ra­pher at the Uni­ver­sity of New Hamp­shire. More recent data from the fed­eral Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion also show that once-precipitous drops in births are slowing.

“There are signs that young adults have turned a cor­ner,” said Mark Mather, asso­ciate vice pres­i­dent at the Pop­u­la­tion Ref­er­ence Bureau. “More young adults are stay­ing in school, which will increase their poten­tial earn­ings when the job mar­ket bounces back. It’s going to take some time, but we should see more young adults enter­ing the labor force, buy­ing homes and start­ing fam­i­lies as eco­nomic con­di­tions improve.”

While poverty slowed, food stamp use con­tin­ued to climb. Roughly 14.9 mil­lion, or 13 per­cent of U.S. house­holds, received food stamps, the high­est level on record, mean­ing that 1 in 8 fam­i­lies was receiv­ing the gov­ern­ment aid. Ore­gon led the nation at 18.9 per­cent, or nearly 1 in 5, due in part to gen­er­ous state pro­vi­sions that expand food stamp eli­gi­bil­ity to fam­i­lies mak­ing 185 per­cent of the poverty level — roughly $3,400 a month for a fam­ily of four. Ore­gon was fol­lowed by more rural or more eco­nom­i­cally hard-hit states, includ­ing Michi­gan, Ten­nessee, Maine, Ken­tucky and Mis­sis­sippi. Wyoming had the fewest house­holds on food stamps, at 5.9 percent.

Gov­ern­ment pro­grams did much to stave off higher rates of poverty. While the offi­cial poverty rate for 2011 remained stuck at 15 per­cent, or a record 46.2 mil­lion peo­ple, the gov­ern­ment for­mula did not take into account non­cash aid such as food stamps, which the Cen­sus Bureau esti­mates would have lifted 3.9 mil­lion peo­ple above the poverty line. If counted, that safety net would have low­ered the poverty rate to 13.7 per­cent. And with­out expanded unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, which began expir­ing in 2011, roughly 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple would have fallen into poverty.

Some 17 states showed sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant increases in the poverty rate, led by Louisiana, Ore­gon, Ari­zona, Geor­gia and Hawaii. Among large met­ro­pol­i­tan areas, McAllen, Texas, led the nation in poverty, at 38 per­cent, fol­lowed by Fresno, Calif., El Paso, Texas, and Bak­ers­field, Calif. In con­trast, the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., metro area had the low­est level of poverty, about 8 per­cent, fol­lowed by Bridge­port, Conn., and Ogden, Utah.

“There are signs among all these mea­sures that the mul­ti­ple down­sides of the Great Reces­sion have bot­tomed out, which is good news espe­cially for young peo­ple who have seen their lives put on hold,” said William H. Frey, a demog­ra­pher at Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion. “There is some light at the end of the tunnel.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.