D’Vera Cohn
D’Vera Cohn is a Senior Writer at the Pew Research Center. She was a Washington Post reporter for 21 years, mainly writing about demographics, and was the newspaper’s lead reporter for the 2000 Census. After leaving the newspaper in 2006, she served as a consultant and freelance writer for the Pew Hispanic Center, Brookings Institution and Population Reference Bureau. She also has advised the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism on demographic topics, and has spoken at national journalism conferences about how reporters can make use of demographic data in stories. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she is a former Nieman Fellow.
05.02.12
At the Population Association of America’s annual conference in San Francisco this week, papers on the recession’s impact on families, wealth, children, young adults, older Americans and other realms of life will be presented in at least 10 of the 200-plus sessions. Much of the research is preliminary, but it raises intriguing questions. One paper tries to assess whether the poor economy has affected divorce rates.
05.01.12
The Population Association of America’s annual conference this week includes posters and papers by Pew Research Center authors. The posting includes links to their work.
04.26.12
Starting in 2013, the Census Bureau would like all of the more than 3 million households that receive its American Community Survey to be pushed to respond online, instead of mailing back the traditional paper questionnaire. The bureau recently released results of a test of online response that had some encouraging results.
04.04.12
A new Pew Hispanic Center survey includes findings on how U.S. Latinos prefer to describe themselves, as well as their views on race, shared culture, language use, the immigrant experience and other topics. A central finding is that slightly more than half prefer to describe themselves by their family’s country of origin, while only a minority use the words “Hispanic” or “Latino.”
04.03.12
The release of records from the 1940 Census will help people research their family history, although at first the records can only be searched by address, not name. This posting details some of the findings and methods of the 1940 Census.
04.02.12
The 1940 Census was notable in the history of census-taking because it was the first in which some questions were asked of sample of Americans. This change enabled the Census Bureau to add questions to the form that were relevant to the Great Depression, and opened the door to the widened use of sample surveys in later censuses.
03.19.12
The Pew Hispanic Center has updated its demographic and economic profiles of the Hispanic and non-Hispanic populations in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, based on the 2010 American Community Survey of the Census Bureau. Pew Hispanic also has updated interactive maps and population counts for counties of the U.S. Hispanic population.
02.16.12
A new report from the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project analyzes the rising prevalence of racial and ethnic intermarriage, and compares rates among different ethnic and racial groups. The report also uses public opinion data to look at changing attitudes toward intermarriage.
01.09.12
How much did the U.S. foreign-born population grow from 2009 to 2010? According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the number grew by 1.5 million, or 4%. But a new Pew Hispanic Center analysis concludes that the growth was markedly lower.
12.14.11
A new Pew Research Center report analyzes trends in marriage rates, age at first marriage and number of new marriages. It finds that barely half of U.S. adults are married, continuing a downward trend. In addition, the median age at first marriage for men and women has never been higher. And the number of people who married within the past year fell 5% from 2009 to 2010.