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COVER
STORY - July
2001 by Adam Bruns Sidebar- The steady trickle of vast amounts of information from Census 2000 has begun. Business owners from all fields hope they can learn something from all those numbers that translates into a flood of profits. The increase of 32.7 million people in the United States between 1990 and 2000 was the largest 10-year population increase in U.S. history, according to the U.S. Census Bureau – larger even than the middle of the baby boom, from 1950 to 1960. (In fact, the population had declined over the three decades since 1960.) Every state gained in population as the total count for the nation reached 281.4 million people. While the West region grew the fastest (19.7 percent), the South was a close second at 17.3 percent.
Among those four million, 1,469,315 were employed, up 1.8 percent from 1998. Even more encouraging, the salaries of those workers were up 7.2 percent, to an average annual pay rate of $26,911. And for those partial to the bootstrap philosophy, there was one other good sign for the state as a whole: total federal spending – whether of the payroll, grant or aid variety – was not high in Kentucky, even with the relative burden of Appalachian underdevelopment. California led the way, followed by New York, with states like Alaska, Hawaii and Alabama rounding out the top ten in per capita federal spending. Here’s a quick look at certain categories of information that can be gleaned from the Census data, all of which is available at www.census.gov. What makes a household a home? The household data for Kentucky from both 1990 and 2000 (see table) display several noticeable trends that were evident nationwide: shrinking size, fewer married-couple households, more second homes and more people living alone. Home-ownership increased by 18 percent nationally during the decade, with two-thirds of U.S. homes occupied by their owners. The number of Kentucky’s owner-occupied homes rose just 1.2 percent, maintaining a healthy 70.8 percent rate. But perhaps even more insight is gained from looking at why people moved to where they currently make those homes. Any suspicion that the nation’s urge for mobility has somehow been stilled by trends involving simpler lifestyles or cocooning is dispelled by this one statistic: Between March 1999 and March 2000, fully 16 percent of the population – or 43 million people – moved to a new residence. More than half did so because of housing-related reasons, among them the desire to own their own home, live in a less expensive home or reside in a better neighborhood. “The desire to live in a new or better house or apartment was the most common reason cited for a short-distance move – one in which the mover remained in the same county,” explains the Census Bureau’s Jason Schachter. Sixteen percent of those 43 million moved for work-related reasons, whether looking for work or for an easier route into the office. The best news from the report is that amid fears of the “outmigration” phenomenon, the South as a whole was the only region of the country to gain in net population (adding 227,000 people) in that one-year period. Young and old
and in between One striking fact is that 14 percent of those age 65 and over across the nation are still active in the civilian labor force, including a full 19 percent of men and 10 percent of women. Half of that population lives in the suburbs, and while the men in that category are about twice as likely as the women to be living with their spouse, the women are about twice as likely to be living below the poverty line. The youth of Kentucky (those under 18) have gone from a decline of 12 percent in the 1980s to a surge of four percent in the 1990s. But their numbers will be no match for the onslaught of elderly about to strike the country as a whole.Those 55 and older will nearly double to almost 90 million by 2020. Those over 65 will grow by 35.3 percent in that period, while those under 65 are projected to grow at a mere 4.2 percent. Race and
ethnicity At the same time, the number of Hispanics climbed to 35.3 million during the decade, a rise of 12.9 million driven primarily by a Mexican influx (58 percent of the total) as landscape-altering as the outflux of American manufacturing plants to their native land. In Kentucky, there were nearly 60,000 Hispanics in the 2000 Census, a dramatic rise of 172 percent from the just-under 22,000 of 1990. While the Census Bureau counted just 1,500 Hispanic-owned businesses in the entire Commonwealth in 1997 (an anemic 0.5-percent showing versus all Kentucky businesses, as opposed to six percent nationwide), there’s a general feeling that number has swelled since. One trend of note to the entrepreneurial-minded: of the 1.2 million Hispanic-owned businesses in the U.S. in 1997, one million of them were sole proprietorships. African-American-owned businesses are also predominantly sole proprietorships, and together the two groups saw a 28 percent rise in business ownership from 1992 to 1997. The white population, growing at a five-percent rate to 211 million, has dropped by that same measure to just 75 percent of the total U.S. population. The Kentucky white population has grown slightly from 3,391,832 to 3,640,889, dropping in the process from 92 percent of the population to 90.1 percent. Meanwhile, the state’s African-American population has also grown slightly from 262,907 (7.1 percent of the population) in 1990 to 295,994, or 7.3 percent of the state total, in 2000. Details are a
marketer’s dream “There are a couple projects we’re working on where it was valuable in verifying what we assumed to be happening,” says Phil Osborne of Lexington’s Preston Group. “For a couple clients with a large customer base in southern and eastern Kentucky, we see those populations aging faster than in other counties. So we’re working with the clients to identify products and services to sell to a graying population.” In another instance, Osborne and his colleagues are working with a healthcare provider in order to target areas where women of childbearing age are predominant in terms of a market segment in specific counties. “That’s the beauty of what the Census provides,” observes Osborne. “You can fine-tune programs so you can go after specific segments. It’s a dump truck full of information that’s available. It’s wonderful in terms of being able to streamline your campaign so you’re not wasting your promotional dollars.” In Louisville, David Stevenson is the president and CEO of the Stevenson Company, a six-year-old market research firm with around 20 employees. The firm’s clientele tend to be in the durable products business sector, including several nationally prominent retailers and manufacturers. What Stevenson does is help them track consumer behavior almost down to the household level. “We conduct a tracking study already called TraqlineTM,” says Stevenson. “It monitors consumer purchases of a whole range of durable goods used in the home. We find out a lot about where these people live and what kinds of people they are. The Census data is quite valuable in this process because we have lots of data on the sub-zip code level, and we can find out from our study markets where our clients are doing well or not so well with their products, identify those areas and demographics and get a whole raft of information. “Or we can take it the other way around,” he continues, “and find geo-demographic segments that the Census or the client have defined, like household size, home value, etc. We can then find out all the zips where they live, take that collection of info, and cross it against people from our survey, then go back to our client with a report.” Because the Census is able to identify similarities between small block-level areas all across the country, Stevenson points out, his firm is able to really pinpoint active population segments, thus enabling clients to assume a more informed and proactive marketing stance with their products. And the great thing
about the Census for the fortunes of any Kentucky
business is a notion contrary to how many owners may
think of the federal government: its storehouse of data
is there for the taking, no loopholes to uncover and no
strings attached. No doubt many Kentucky entrepreneurs
have already accessed the data and are in the midst of
fine-tuning their own business plans. Have you? Adam Bruns is
associate editor of The Lane Report.
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Copyright 1996-2001, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial
content is copyright 2001, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
Where did Kentucky
fall? Well, as most of its residents have become
accustomed to no matter what the topic, right about in
the middle. The state surpassed four million people,
growing at a 9.7 percent clip. Just over three million
were of voting age, with 1,544,187 of them finding their
way to the polls for the 2000 presidential election.