Comparison of California to the United States of America
The United States Census is taken every ten years in order for the U.S. government to count exactly how many people live in the country to the best of its abilities. Aside from taking the population, the census asks many other questions, such as the age of the persons living in a given household, their race and ethnicity, the languages that are spoken at home, their educational attainment level, and household income. These questions, when answered by the entire population, provide the government a sense of the composition and the needs of its people. Without this information, public services such as education, hospitals, health care, and social security cannot be provided to all in need and therefore it is important data that deserves our careful examination. For my term paper, I have decided to compare the data of the state of California to the United States of America to discover how similar or different the sets of data may be. I would predict some of these data to be similar, such as age distribution, due to the fact that California is a relatively large state with a large enough population that it would serve as a pretty good sample of the entire nation. However, I would expect to see differences in factors such as rac
The second demographic variable I will focus on is the racial composition of California and the United States. Graph 2 shows the percentages of the total population, which fall under the five racial categories: 1.White 2.Black 3.American Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut 4.Asian or Pacific Islander and 5.Other. It is important to note that people of Hispanic origin are mainly categorized as either White or Other, depending on how each individual has chosen to categorize him or herself. The category, Other, also include people who are mixed, such as Mulatto, Creole, and Mestizo. The breakdown of the races are pretty similar, as can be seen by the graph with Whites being the overwhelming majority of the total population for both regions. However, it may be interesting to note that the origins of the people who make up the White category for the two regions may be quite different. For the United States, the composition of the people who make up the White category are mostly of European origin. The origin of people who make up the White category for California also include many people of European origin, but also many of Hispanic origin. This is due to the fact that California shares the border with Mexico and therefore would have a larger Mexican or Latino population. Also due to the large Mexican and Latino population, the Other category for California is almost 10% larger than for the United States. The lower Black population in California can be attributed to the fact that the majority of Blacks in this country are concentrated in the southern states of the US, such as Alabama, raising the composition for the nation, but not for California. Lastly, the Asian and Pacific Islander category is almost 8% higher in California because many Asians tend to be concentrated on the west coast of the US. The first obvious step in my analysis is to look at both populations counted by the 1990 United States census. The population of the United States is estimated to be 248,709,873 and California is estimated to be 29,760,021. This data is important to this paper because when making comparisons between the two geographic locations, I will use percentages taken from the actual data given in the census divided by the total populations. This way, the comparisons are scaled in relation to one another and it is easier to analyze and to make comparisons. The first demographic variable that I will examine is the age distribution between the two areas. The age distribution given by the population age pyramid (Graph 1) show that both are quite similar, with a pyramid-like shape starting from age 25 to 80+, with the large base of the pyramid beginning at age 25. From age 0 to 24, there is an overall tapering in from the base of the pyramid ab
Some common words found in the essay are:
United Census, Educational Attainment, Silicon Valley, II Looking, Creole Mestizo, Subsequently English, United America, Mexican Latino, Pacific Islander, California Asians, household income, united census, people white category, income california, spoken home, english home, california united, people white, white category, people aged, fewer people, fewer people aged, languages spoken home, ages 25 34, languages english home,
Approximate Word count = 1856
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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