Census Bureau

THE SUPREME Court last week agreed to consider the dispute between those who believe the Census should stick to counting people and those who favor using sophisticated statistical analysis to arrive at total population. Since much depends on Census Bureau population figures, this is an important political, social and economic issue.It has also been treated as something of a partisan one in the past. Big cities are Democratic turf. But New York City and Los Angeles are Republican-run today, so perhaps partisanship will fade away.

Central Maryland's rate of homeownership, the proportion of households that are owner-occupied, was slightly lower in the fourth quarter of 2012 than during the same time a year earlier, according to data recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Just over 65 percent of occupied homes in Baltimore and six surrounding counties - Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford, Howard and Queen Anne's - were owned by someone who lived there, the Census Bureau reported. In the fourth quarter of 2011, the homeownership rate in the region was 67.5 percent.

Maryland's population rose to nearly 5.46 million this year, a 1.3 percent increase in line with the growth rates of other mid-Atlantic states, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released yesterday. Most of the growth came from births, said Melissa Therrien, a Census Bureau demographer. Maryland had about 31,000 more births than deaths. Another source of growth was 25,000 people migrating from other states. The Census Bureau estimated that Maryland received 16,000 immigrants. The estimates, which are based on the 2000 census and other population data and figure in federal funding for states, indicated that Maryland added 72,058 residents from July 1, 2001, to July 1, 2002.

Baltimore County police and fire units responded Tuesday morning after a suspicious powder was found at a processing center for the U.S. Census Bureau in Essex. The powder was found to be harmless, a Fire Department spokeswoman said. Police and fire departments were called about 10 a.m. to the Census Bureau's Data Capture Center, in the 8400 block of Kelso Drive, to examine a package containing a small amount of powder. "We did not evacuate the building, no one was showing symptoms, there were no transports," said Fire Department spokeswoman Elise Armacost.

Saying quiet diplomacy has gotten the city nowhere, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke announced yesterday that Baltimore will join 15 other cities in a lawsuit that seeks to force the Census Bureau to adjust the 1990 census to reflect 5.3 million uncounted Americans."

Pearl Rzeczkowski has lived in the same house on Gough Street for 40 years, but when the Census Bureau did its Baltimore count it somehow missed her."Nobody has been around," Rzeczkowski said today.Asked whether she heard that the census was being taken, she said, "I may have heard it but I didn't pay it any mind."Rzeczkowski apparently is not alone. City officials say she is among an estimated 20,000 Baltimoreans missed during the recent census count. As a result, Baltimore is asking the Census Bureau to adjust preliminary figures showing that the city has lost 66,000 residents -- 8.5 percent of its population -- over the past decade.

Jean and John King, of Laurel; and Carol and Allen Heyne, of Bloomingdale, Ill., announce the engagement of their children, Kimberly King and Matthew Heyne. The bride-to-be is a 2002 graduate of Eleanor Roosevelt High School and a 2006 graduate of the University of Maryland. She is currently employed by theU.S. Census Bureau. A 2009 graduate of the University of Maryland, the future groom is employed byU.S. Department of Homeland Security. A September wedding is planned.

College-educated black women have nearly closed the income gap with their white counterparts, according to a snapshot of black America released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau.African-American women with bachelor's degrees earned 98 percent of what white women with the same level of education did in 1995, the figures showed. College-educated black men's income was 73 percent of that of similarly educated white men. Women of both races made less than men.Black per capita income overall was 56 percent of white income.

WASHINGTON -- Two years from the start of the 2000 Census, it is shaping up as the most contentious in 80 years, generating fierce debate in Congress, and litigation aimed at blocking the Census Bureau from changing the way it does business.During the past year, the dispute over the bureau's plans to alter its method of counting the population delayed passage of a disaster relief bill for victims of flooding in the Midwest, prompted Congress and the Clinton administration to set up an outside board to monitor the bureau and generated two lawsuits, including one by House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

WASHINGTON -- A smaller percentage of Americans are pulling up their roots and moving out of state than at any time since 1950, the Census Bureau said yesterday, suggesting that the great postwar population shifts that reshaped the country's political, social and economic landscape have, for the moment, come to an end.The Census Bureau figures show an overall decline in Americans' mobility. It said that about 16.7 percent of the population changed residences during a one-year period ending in March 1994, far below the 20 percent that moved in a typical year during the 1950s and 1960s and the second-lowest level of mobility since 1948 when the Census Bureau began tracking such movement.