The Inquirer has a decent analysis of U.S. census results for Philly. You have to subscribe the Inquirer to read it (which I have done maybe because I was shamed by one of those articles about the decline of local news? also since I don’t really watch TV I am aware of almost no local news unless I pay for it). Anyway, a couple highlights although the graphics are worth a look:

• They provide the Gini index and change in the Gini index over the last 5 years or so. Income inequality has gotten worse, and Philadelphia proper is the worst in the Philadelphia metro area. They point out that this could be because the rich have gotten richer or the poor have gotten poorer, or both, but then they don’t dig into that any further.
• The depressing statistic remains that Philadelphia is the poorest major city in the United States at over 20% of residents living in poverty. This is pathetic. They picked 10 “major cities” (not clear if these are counties or metro areas) – Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio are the next poorest after Philly (go Texas!) and Chicago, New York and Los Angeles are 5-7 respectively, with San Diego and San Jose bringing up the rear (i.e., the best of the worst? or the best of the worst of the biggest?). So whatever the impression we might get in the media, the economy in California seems to be doing a bit better than Texas if poverty is the metric. The article points out that social benefits like food stamps are not considered (but maybe tax benefits like the earned income tax credit would be?) but doesn’t dig into it further.
• About 2 of 3 Philadelphia residents were born in Pennsylvania, indicating people are not that mobile and we are not attracting new residents from elsewhere the way the sun belt cities generally area. They did not do this analysis by metro area, so including people from the New Jersey and Delaware might push this number even higher (and excluding people from, say, the northwestern tip of the state which is a 7 hour drive from here probably would not push it that much lower.)
• Philadelphia has the second lowest percentage of foreign-born residents of the 10 cities (counties? metro areas?) studied. San Antonio had the lowest, so being near a militarized international border does not seem to correlate to attracting immigrants. Interestingly, Interestingly Philadelphia has the highest percentage of immigrants from Africa at about 11% of immigrants. Houston and Dallas are next, which again I wouldn’t have guessed. But I would keep in mind that in terms of sheer numbers, New York, LA, and Chicago may still have the most people in almost any category.
• A majority of people over the age of 15 have never been married. This is interesting. Does this mean our city is particularly young (I don’t think so), particular groups are not getting married (I think so), or people are getting married later in life? To answer the last question, it would be interesting to know what age people tend to get married on average. I got married at 30, so if the average age were to be 25 or 30, what percent of people over that age have ever been married? What percent of people who are not married now will eventually get married? That would be an interesting number. 18% of all people over 15 are separated, divorced, or widowed (but if you want to know what % of people who get married eventually get divorced or separated, you would want to separate out the people who are widowed.) 50% of people who get married and don’t get divorced are going to get widowed – there’s a depressing thought. Or I guess it would be slightly less than 50% – I suppose a few couples go down together in car or plane crashes, sinking boats, fires/floods/building collapses, or the very occasional suicide pact. That’s sweet, now I feel better.