BRATTLEBORO — The U.S. Census Bureau is in the process of releasing data from the 2010 Census, the total population count of the United States that is done every 10 years, and the American Communities Survey (ACS), which is done yearly and measures the characteristics of a population, such as income, the poverty rate, housing conditions, and employment.
Will “Chip” Sawyer, state data manager for the Center for Rural Studies (CRS) at the University of Vermont, has been busy correlating and interpreting this data. He gave a presentation at Brooks Memorial Library on Feb. 23 that attempted to give some shape and form to the avalanche of numbers flowing into the CRS.
Vermont was one of the first states in the nation to receive detailed population and demographic data from the Census Bureau. Every state is expected to receive this data by April 1 to use for remapping state legislative districts and congressional districts.
Vermont's population as a whole grew from 608,827 in 2000 to 625,741 in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The meager 2.8 percent growth rate between 2000 and 2010 was the state's lowest since the 1940 Census, when the state reported a minus 0.1 percent growth rate.
By comparison, the average decennial growth rate between 1960 and 1990 was 14.8 percent, and the rate of growth between 1990 and 2000 was 8.2 percent.
Vermont remains the second smallest state in the nation (behind Wyoming, with 563,626 people) and ranked 44th in the rate of growth between 2000 and 2010.
“Vermont was growing at a rate faster than the rest of the nation between 1960 and 2000,” Sawyer said. “Now, it's growing at a rate much slower than the rest of the nation.”
The state remains below the population threshold for which more than one congressional district is needed, Sawyer said.
As for local legislative districts, the 2010 Census data will be examined next week by the seven-member Vermont Legislative Apportionment Board to see if any district boundaries need to be adjusted.
Windham County's growth rate was even more sluggish. The Census Bureau found that Windham County had 44,513 residents as of April 1, 2010, compared to 42,216 in 2000. That's a growth rate of about 1 percent.
According to Census data, Brattleboro gained 41 residents in the 2010 Census, and now has 12,046 people. Interestingly, Sawyer pointed out that while the population of Windham County as a whole has grown steadily since 1930, the number of people living in Brattleboro has stayed about the same - between 11,000 and 12,000 - since 1950.
The fastest growing town in Windham County is Stratton, which added 80 residents in 2010 for a 59 percent growth rate, from 136 to 216 people.
Athens grew by 30 percent, going from 340 to 442 residents. Windham added 91 people in growing from 328 to 419 residents, a 28 percent jump.
Other towns that saw double-digit growth included Brookline (13 percent, from 467 to 530) and Marlboro (10 percent, from 978 to 1,078).
Dover lost 20 percent of its population, going from 1,410 to 1,124 residents, while Wilmington was not far behind with a 16 percent drop, going from 2,225 to 1,876 people.
Margin of error
Some have questioned these figures. Sawyer admitted that the Census is not infallible and cited factors that might have affected the count.
He said the current recession may have skewed the numbers in some towns, especially towns with large numbers of second homes. He also thinks that mistakes made in the 1990 and 2000 Census counts might have affected the 2010 numbers.
“Almost every resort town in the state lost population in the 2010 Census,” said Sawyer, “but the Census did a better job factoring in second homes this time around. For example, the school-age population in Dover remained stable, despite the raw population numbers.”
The biggest statistical quirks for Windham County can be found in the ACS, which the Census Bureau began in 2005. Sawyer said the Census Bureau knows this, and this year, it has added the margin of error for all its demographic categories.
“The Census is changing the game by acknowledging the margin of error,” he said. “The Census is more accurate, but it comes out only once every 10 years. The ACS is more detailed and the questions are asked every year, but it is not as accurate.”
Sawyer said that one has to look at both the Census and the ACS figures to come up with a complete picture. That is especially important when looking at ACS data coming from rural areas, defined as any area with fewer than 20,000 people. Sawyer said that while the ACS asks demographic questions of three million U.S. households, the lower populations of rural areas translate into smaller data samples being taken. This increases the margin of error.
This year, Windham County is getting its first five-year ACS estimate. But the 2005-2009 estimates reflect the worst years of the current recession, Sawyer said, which skews the figures even more.
For example, according to the ACS, Windham County has a poverty rate of 10.9 percent, with a 1.9 percent margin of error. By comparison, the state as a whole has a 11 percent poverty rate with an 0.4 percent margin of error. And, Windham County's poverty figures are not substantially different than eight other Vermont counties. Orange and Grand Isle are lower, while Essex, Orleans and Caledonia are higher.
But the sample size is everything in reporting town poverty rates. Somerset, with a population of 3, reported a poverty rate of zero, but the margin of error was 100 percent, said Sawyer.
Marlboro reported a poverty rate of 26.5 percent, the highest in Windham County, but the margin of error was 23.8 percent. Why are both numbers so high?
Sawyer said that Marlboro College, and the large number of students living in and around the college, skews the town's numbers. By federal guidelines, the students are classified as low income.
By comparison, Brattleboro has a 15.9 percent poverty rate, and the margin of error is 3.1 percent. This figure, Sawyer said, was much more plausible than Marlboro's.
Digging in deep
Much of the ACS data can be found at the Census Bureau's American Factfinder website at http://factfinder2.census.gov, which is in the process of being overhauled to accommodate the 2010 Census and the extra demographic data that's been gathered.
How deep does the ACS data go? It found that the median age in Windham County is 43.6 years, compared to the state median of 46.8 years.
It found the average commute to work for a Windham County resident is 20.2 minutes, compared to the state median of 37 minutes.
And it found that the percentage of Windham County residents who spend more than 30 percent of their household income on housing costs is 30.5 percent.
Statewide, Vermont is one of four states - West Virginia, Maine and Pennsylvania are the others - that are experiencing what the Census Bureau calls “natural decrease,” or more deaths than births occur each year. Vermont also has one of the lowest fertility rates in the nation, Sawyer said.
Vermont's dubious status as the whitest state in the nation may change once all the Census demographic figures come out later this spring. The percentage of Vermont's population that is non-Hispanic white has dropped to 94 percent, and the African-American population has doubled.
And, according to Census data, despite overall population growth, there are 18,000 fewer Vermonters under the age of 17 than there were in 2000.
“We're all still reeling from all the data we've gotten since December,” said Sawyer, who added that there is still lots more data to come.