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U.S. 2010

For sixty years, the Russell Sage Foundation has produced authoritative research on trends and changes in U.S. society using information from the decennial census. U.S. 2010: America After the First Decade of the New Century continues this tradition by reporting on key social and economic trends during the previous decade. Between 2000 and 2010, the United States experienced dramatic political, social, and economic changes and events. From two wars abroad during the course of the decade, to the "Great Recession" and the election of the country's first African-American president, the first ten years of the twenty-first century will provide an interesting barometer of prior trends and future directions.

Project Description

Launched in 2009 with a grant of over $1.2 million to Professor John Logan of Brown University, the U.S. 2010 project is an investigation of the subtle shifts and long-term trends in American life and an analysis of what these developments may mean for the future. Based on the decennial census, the American Community Survey, and other key data sources, the findings from U.S. 2010 will serve as a point of reference for policymakers, journalists, and researchers seeking the clearest possible view of the current state of the nation.

Research

Over a two-year span, 14 research teams from universities across the United States will release short briefs and a chapter-length report on their areas, which include immigration, segregation, economics, education, aging, and the changing American family.

Completed research briefs will become available beginning in late 2010 through mid-2011, with completed book chapters to appear as early as 2012. Findings will be disseminated both as published materials and via a map system on the American Communities Project web site. Users will be able to search, sort, and compare data across income groups, geographic locations, race and ethnicity, educational attainment, and much more.

Below is a complete list of topics to be explored for the U.S. 2010 project. Reports will be published here as they are released. Please click on the titles to learn more about the individual projects.

Resources

The Foundation's grant is centered on the U.S. 2010 website, a component of the American Communities Project (ACP). Originally developed for the 2000 Census, the ACP is a web-based research tool that distributes information about demographic changes affecting neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas around the country. It includes studies based on both contemporary and historical U.S. Census data and research on public schools, especially school segregation and racial disparities in educational achievement. Web-based mapping systems provide data for census tracts (Map U.S.A.) and schools (Map U.S. Schools) across the United States. ACP will employ this mapping technology for the Russell Sage-funded U.S. 2010 site. Users will be able to move beyond mere statistics to see, for example, how crime, poverty, public health, and elections are spatially organized and where advantage or disadvantage is concentrated in American communities. ACP is an exciting partner in the U.S. 2010 project and this collaboration will make findings accessible to a wider audience, including scholars, policymakers, the media, and the general public.

Project Architecture

U.S. 2010 preserves the structure of previous RSF census initiatives, but expands their scope in significant ways. The U.S. Census now uses a short, abridged questionnaire--necessitating the use of other data sources for the most complete picture of contemporary American life. The annual American Community Survey (ACS), a separate component of the U.S. Census Program, is likely to become the preeminent source of information on the demographic, social, and ecnomic characteristics of the U.S. population, and will be widely used by U.S. 2010 authors. ACS collects and produces population information every year instead of every ten years. While the U.S. Census is sent to every address in the United States, the more extensive ACS form is mailed to a random sample of the population who answer questions about housing and property, income and employment, education, and race and ethnicity. ACS now provides a more detailed and timely reflection of how Americans actually live and work than does the Census. The authors of the U.S. 2010 publications will explore the decennial census, the American Community Survey, and numerous other relevant data sources to address each topic.

Research findings will be published both as short, descriptive briefs and longer, analytic reports. Briefs will be especially important for addressing timely subject matter and for their appeal to a broader audience. The longer reports will be more scholarly in approach and substance. Where appropriate, report authors will release briefs of especially topical findings, resulting in a high degree of integration between the two types of publications.

Advisory Committee

One of the key elements of all prior RSF Census efforts, and critical to the success of those efforts, has been the establishment of an Advisory Committee. Advisory Committee members are prominent scholars with extensive knowledge of the census and other national data sets as well as the issues and trends of greatest importance in American society. The members of the U.S. 2010 Advisory Committee reflect a wide array of academic disciplines and interests:

  • Margo Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (History)
  • Suzanne Bianchi, University of California, Los Angeles (Sociology/Demography)
  • Barry Bluestone, Northeastern University (Economics)
  • Sheldon Danziger, University of Michigan (Economics)
  • Claude Fischer, University of California-Berkeley (Sociology)
  • Daniel Lichter, Cornell University (Demography)
  • Kenneth Prewitt, Columbia University (Political Science) and former Director, U.S. Census Bureau

The committee is integral to identifying, recruiting, and selecting authors with the expertise to advance social science knowledge in each topic area. Committee members also work with authors throughout the process to produce a final report. Final manuscripts are subject to a thorough internal and external review process. The U.S. 2010 project comprises fourteen reports in twelve topic areas, which range in focus from trends in wealth inequality and racial segregation to the changing structure of the American family.

History

The Russell Sage Foundation has analyzed and published its findings on the decennial census since 1950 when the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) initiated the Committee on Census Monographs, which was supported by an award from RSF. Seventeen volumes were published between 1955 and 1958. Many continue to be recognized as definitive works describing demographic and social trends in the first half of the twentieth century. The SSRC/RSF partnership continued to conduct census research for the next fifty years. In 2000, the Russell Sage Foundation partnered with the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) to produce The American People: Census 2000, edited by Reynolds Farley (University of Michigan) and John Haaga (PRB). The Foundation also supported several other census-based books reflecting on the import of the new millennium and the evolution of American society, including Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last One Hundred Years (2006) by Claude Fischer and Michael Hout (both of University of California, Berkeley) and One Nation Divisible: What America Was and What it is Becoming (2006) by Michael Katz and Mark Stern (both of the University of Pennsylvania).