More young adults are leaving their parents’ homes to take a chance with college or a job. Across the nation, people are on the move again after putting their lives on hold and staying put. Once-sharp declines in births are leveling off, and poverty is slowing.
A new snapshot of census data from 2011 provides sociological backup for what economic indicators were already suggesting: that the nation is in a tentative, fragile recovery.
“We may be seeing the beginning of the American family’s recovery from the Great Recession,” said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University.
He pointed in particular to the upswing in mobility and to young men moving out of their parents’ homes, both signs that more young adults were testing out job prospects.
“It could be the modest number of new jobs or simply the belief that the worst is over,” Cherlin said.
The new 2011 Census Bureau f igures released Thursday show progress in an economic recovery that technically began in mid-2009. The annual survey, supplemented with unpublished government figures as of March 2012, covers a yearin which unemployment fell modestly from 9.6 percent to 8.9 percent.
Not all is well, however. The jobless rate remains high at 8.1 percent. In July, Arkansas’ unemployment rate was 7.3 percent. While housing sales have more recently gained, homeownership last year dropped for a fifthstraight year to 64.6 percent, the lowest in more than a decade, because of stringent financing rules and a shift to renting.
More Americans than ever are turning to food stamps, and residents in housing that is considered “crowded” held steady at 1 percent, tied for the highest mark since 2003.
Taken as a whole, however, analysts say the census data, which track changing patterns in everyday life, provide the latest evidence of a stabilizing U.S. economy. Coming after the devastating housing bust in 2006, such a leveling off would mark anend to the longest and most pernicious economic decline since World War II.
Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University, said the data point to a “fragile recovery,” with the economy still at risk of falling back into recession depending in part on who is president and whether Congress averts a “fiscal cliff ” of deep government-spending cuts and higher taxes in January. “Given the situation in the world economy, we are doing better than many other countries,” he said. “Government policies remain critical.”
The census figures also show slowing growth in the foreign-born population, which increased to 40.4 million, or 13 percent of theU.S. population. Last year’s influx increase of 400,000 people was the lowest in a decade, reflecting a minimal gain of Hispanics after many Mexicans already in the U.S. opted to return home.
Some 11 million people are estimated to be in the U.S. illegally.
As a whole, Americans were slowly finding ways to get back on the move. About 12 percent of the nation’s population, or 36.5 million, moved to a new home, up from a record low of 11.6 percent in 2010.
Among adults ages 25 to 29, the most mobile age group, moves also increased to 24.6 percent from a low of 24.1 percent in the previous year. Longer-distance moves, typically for those seeking new careers in other regions of the country, rose modestly from 3.4 percent to 3.8 percent.
Less willing to rely on parents, roughly 5.6 million Americans ages 25-34, or 13.6 percent, lived with parents, a decrease from 14.2 percent in the previous year.
Young men were less likely than before to live with parents, down from 18.6 percent to 16.9 percent; young women living with parents edged higher to 10.4 percent, up from 9.7 percent.
The increases in mobility coincide with modest improvements in the job market, as well as increased school enrollment, especially in college and at advanceddegree levels.
Births appeared to be backing off years of steep declines. In 2011, the number of births dipped by 55,000, or 1 percent, to 4.1 million,the smallest drop since the pre-recession peak in 2008, according to Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor and senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire.
More recent data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also show that once-precipitous drops in births are slowing.
While poverty slowed, food-stamp use continued to climb. Roughly 14.9 million, or 13 percent of U.S. households, received food stamps, the highest level on record, meaning that 1 in 8 families was receiving the government aid.
Arkansas ranked high in terms of those receiving food stamps - about 15.3 percent of households. That was up from 13.7 percent in 2010. Oregon led the nation at 18.9 percent, or nearly 1 in 5, partly because of generous state provisions that expand food-stamp eligibility to families making 185 percent of the poverty level - roughly $3,400 a month for a family of four.
Oregon was followed by more-rural or more-economically hard-hit states, including Michigan, Tennessee, Maine, Kentucky and Mississippi. Wyoming had the fewest households on food stamps, at 5.9 percent.
Government programs did much to stave off higher rates of poverty. While the official poverty rate for 2011remained stuck at 15 percent, or a record 46.2 million people, the government formula did not take into account noncash aid such as food stamps, which the Census Bureau estimates would have lifted 3.9 million people above the poverty line.
If counted, that safety net would have lowered the poverty rate to 13.7 percent. And without expanded unemployment benefits, which began expiring in 2011, roughly 2.3 million people would have fallen into poverty.
Some 17 states showed statistically significant increases in the poverty rate, led by Louisiana, Oregon, Arizona, Georgia and Hawaii.
Last year, 19.5 percent of Arkansans were living in poverty, compared with 18.8 percent the year before - a percentage change that fell within the survey’s margin of error.
Thirty-two states including Arkansas saw no significant change in median household income.
In 2011, the state’s median household income was $38,758, down from $39,375 the year before. The 1.6 percent decrease was within the survey’s 2.4 percent margin of error.
Information for this article was contributed by Hope Yen of The Associated Press and by Chad Day of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 09/21/2012