Morton Marcus
Last week, we looked at Hispanic and racial differences on a state-by-state basis. In that process, I learned from editors to explain some simple ideas in a more simplified fashion. Now we’ll dig down into the Indiana counties.
We start with a profile of each area’s population. The Indiana profile, for example, is the percentage of the population identifying as Hispanic (who can be of any race) 7.5% or Not-Hispanic (NH) 92.5%. This latter group is divided for simplicity into White 77.2%, Black 9.3%, Asian 2.5%, and Other races or combinations of races 3.5%.
Profiles help us answer three questions:
1. Which counties has the highest/lowest percent of a specific population group and what is the rank of each county for that group?
2. Which county is most/least like the state?
3. Which county is the most/least diverse?
1. Highs and lows?
· Lake County has the highest percent of Hispanic population at 20.2%; Ohio County is lowest with a zero percent.
· NH White is highest in Franklin county (96.2%) and lowest in Marion County (52.5%).
· NH Black or African American is highest in Marion County (27.9%) and lowest (0.1%) in both Franklin and Warren.
· NH Asian is greatest (8.1%) in Bartholomew County, but none reported in Martin, Parke, or Switzerland.
· NH Other races are highest in Clark and Gibson counties (4.8%) while Dubois, Pike and Putnam each record only 1.2% of their populations in this diverse group.
2. Most like/unlike the state?
Here we compare the difference of Indiana’s profile with the profiles of each of our 92 counties.
· The county most like the state is LaPorte with a difference of just 2.25%. That is the portion of LaPorte County’s population that would have to shift from group to group to match the state’s profile. Hendricks comes in 2nd at 4.5%, Allen and Clark tie in 3rd place.
· Marion and Lake are least like the state at 24.7% and at 26.4% differences respectively.
3. Diversity?
Each county’s profile can be converted to a diversity index which is at 100% when perfect equality reigns, that is, when the percentages of persons in each of the five groups are identical; zero means only one group is represented in the county.
· Marion and Lake rank 1st and 2nd with index values close to 72. St. Joseph and Allen follow in the mid-50s, Tippecanoe and Elkhart in the upper-40s, Cass, LaPorte and Bartholomew in the lower 40s.
· Franklin County at 8.5 is least diverse. Close by are six counties with scores of 9 to 10 (Washington, Pike, Vermillion, Greene, Owen and Dearborn).
Some people crave more diversity; others are threatened by it. Today diversity is judged mainly by gender, pigmentation and place of origin. Someday there may be more attention given to the choices we make in life rather than our conditions at birth.
Mr. Marcus is an economist. Reach him at [email protected]. Follow him and John Guy on Who Gets What? wherever podcasts are available or at mortonjohn.libsyn.com.
