WHO WE ARE NOW

A New York Times editor examines the 2000 US Census (along with much other data) and reports that we are in some ways the same as we always were—but very different, too.

Employing techniques similar to those he used in Who We Are: A Portrait of America Based on the 1990 Census (1994), Roberts stitches patches of statistical information together with a slender, though not always silken, narrative. He begins with this: the average American is a 35-year-old woman living in her own home in the metro West or South. In 1900, this statistical citizen was a 26-year-old man renting property in rural America. Roberts explains the importance of demographics, then devotes himself to such subjects as households, aging, transience, race, income, and education. (Intriguingly, there’s little on religion.) He ends with a view of how the US fits statistically into today’s world. Along the way, some data surprise: Only 52% of households contain a married couple. Two-thirds of black children are born out of wedlock. New York City hosts 26,402 people per square mile. One out of 32 adults is or has been in prison. Only 20% of college students fit what the author calls the “Joe College” model: a resident student in a four-year program. Other findings confirm common observation. Florida is the “oldest” state; our population is shifting to the Southwest; women and blacks earn less than white men in similar occupations. Some of the findings also have profound social implications. More than 10% of black men in their late 20s are in prison. Ballooning older generations challenge the capacity of the younger to support them. Meantime, the text and numerous charts are sometimes dense with numbers and allusions; one paragraph features Ehrenreich, Jefferson, Arnold, Fussell, Marx, Baritz, and Flaubert. To his credit, Roberts strives to maintain political neutrality, though he characterizes mandatory sentencing laws as “Draconian.”

Always useful, often entertaining, rarely dull. (34 b&w illustrations)