More Verification

So I started thinking about my last post, and realized that it's based on an assumption that many African-American residents of the District (well, in the NE/SE quadrants) come from lower-income and perhaps single-parent households. While this may be true, I need to verify this assumption before basing any theories on it. (Of course, no matter what the data proves, I still believe that the cultures we're brought up in - black, white, latino, asian, immigrant, etc are different and we have different "codes" we follow).

According to the 2000 census, DC has 572,059 residents. Of these, 343,312, or exactly 60%, are African-American. While not broken down by race, 24,561 people, or 9.9%, live in households with a female householder with her own children under 18. This didn't seem that high to me. I checked some of the zip codes I drive through - they tend to be have a higher percentage of African-Americans, more like 75%, but similar numbers of single mother households, 9.1% for the 20017 zip code, 9.7% for 20018 (both in the District). Once you cross the state line into Maryland's Prince George's county, the percentage of single mother homes goes up to 11.9% in 20712 and 10.5% in 20782.

Like I said, these numbers didn't seem so high to me, but I needed something to compare them to. So I checked the zip code where I grew up, 32812 (in Orlando, Florida). The first thing I noticed: the percentage of whites was 75.1%, and African-American/Black 12.3%. Those numbers are almost the reverse of many of the neighborhoods I drive through! However, the percentage of single mother homes is not much lower, 8.2%. Then I checked the zip code of the hospital where I was born, in Wheat Ridge, Colorado (outside of Denver). Similar stats for the white/black population as Orlando (in fact, I think they are exactly the same). The percentage of single moms? It's 7.3%.

My assumptions about children growing up in single-parent (mom) households, then, seems to be a bit exaggerated. The comparison of race, however, is pretty significant. Perhaps the school factor plays a more important role here. As I said before, I went to a school with an extensive driver's ed program and an entire course set up for driver's ed.

If we just take one zip code, 20017, 85% of the children enrolled in nursery through 12th grade are in public school. The real test here is to call up those public schools (the high schools) and ask about their driver's education programs. That may be a job for tomorrow, since I'm sure they close after 5:30pm, especially during the summer. In my hometown zip, 32812, 87% are enrolled in public school. So we're comparing similar public school enrollments. Next? Really, I should narrow this down to just high school students, and then find out how many of those schools have driver's ed classes and what kind of resources they have for them.

For another day. Don't you love that this has become a research project? It's also an interesting way to think about research design.

U.S. Census Bureau: Census 2000 Gateway (click on "American Fact Finder" to find out information for a particular zip code)