census data: most common ethnic group, by county

[jrtom]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg

I would not have expected "German" to be nearly so prevalent.

Of course, now I really want a tool that gives me histograms (or pie charts, or whatever) for each county.

Comments

[hukuma.livejournal.com]

That's pretty neat. I wonder what "American" ancestry means, though.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I wondered that myself. I assume that these are self-reported categories and that basically what we're seeing is the outcome of the equivalent of approval voting on ethnicities (i.e., everyone checks all that apply and this graphic reports the most common checked box). If that's true, "American" means whatever the respondent thinks it does, and what this actually shows is a mix of actual ethnicity data filtered by cultural assumptions relating to perceived ethnic identity. I don't know what the methodology was, though.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that too. When I was in HS and applying for college, one of the boxes was "Native American" and a few of my friends threatened to check that box so they'd have minority status and be more likely to be accepted.

I find some of their category divisions to be confusing. Why is there a "Hispanic" category but also "Mexico" and "Puerto Rico"? Why is there "French Canadian" but not just "Canadian"? Why is there "African American" for those who don't know which nation their forefathers came from, but not "European"?

[hukuma.livejournal.com]

I guess it's based on what people actually answer. Looking at the census table (http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/ancestry/ancestry_q_by_DAC_2000.xls), some people do say European (likewise, Canadian), but not in large enough numbers to be the top group in a county.