2010 Census Analysis from DuPage, Illinois

Great to see Phil Smith, Project Director for Human Services Planning at the DuPage Federation on Human Services Reform at #NAPC11, the 2011 National Association of Planning Councils Conference.

Phil has written up some information about demographic changes in the DuPage and West Cook, Illinois areas, and provided some interesting and informative visuals. Unfortunately, I was not able to upload his Excel spreadsheet due to the limitations of the Blogger software. You can email me here if you'd like to see it, or Phil has his contact information below.

There have been a number of stories in the local and the national media about the racial and ethnic demographic shifts indicated in the recent 2010 Census release. I have attached four files that provide additional detail on these shifts. The first three files are maps (produced by Ruth Anne Tobias at NIU) that show changes in the DuPage and West Cook area by municipality. They are fairly self explanatory, but note that the total percent change of the population of each municipality is also shown on the map to give additional perspective of the race/ethnic changes.

The fourth file is an extensive Excel workbook (with several tabs) that provides detail at the township level for Chicago and suburban areas. Note that I analyzed suburban Cook county as well as the West Cook area that is shown on the maps. There are two charts embedded in each tab. The first chart shows the change in the percent of the population for each race/ethnicity. As an example, if Hispanics made up 10% of a township's population in 2000 and 25% in 2010, the change is 15%. I believe that this more fairly shows the perceived change in race/ethnic make-up than showing the percent change in a population number (i.e., if the base is small, a large percent increase may not mean much). The second chart in each tab just shows the change in the numbers, which is also useful for seeing where people are moving to and from. All of the raw data for these charts are provided in the spreadsheets.

As an overall observation, it seems pretty clear that race and ethnic populations have been locating and moving around quite a bit. One big story in the Chicago region is the loss of population in Chicago (down over 200,000), and that a large portion of this (over 181,000) is a reduction of the Black population. Some media stories noted the large increases in the Black population in the south suburbs, but the attached numbers show that these increases only account for a little over one-fourth (26.6%) of the Chicago loss (see Rich, Thorton, Bloom, and Worth Townships). In fact, the increase in the Black population in all of the five counties in the attached analysis only accounted for 56.2% of the Black population loss in Chicago. So, the question is where did they all go? The answer is probably "everywhere." Another big story is about the increases in the Hispanic population, which appears to be occurring everywhere. Even the high-growth areas of Will and Kane Counties saw increases, not just in White population but in racially and ethnically mixed populations as well.

I hope you enjoy and/or find the attached information useful. Contact me if you have any questions or if there is any further analysis you would like me to do for you.

Phil Smith
Project Director, Human Services Planning
DuPage Federation on Human Services Reform
146 West Roosevelt Road
Villa Park, Illinois 60181
Tel: (630) 530-7802

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