Judicial Facts and Figures is a set of tables containing historical caseload data primarily for the fiscal years from 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2002 through 2007. The tables include data on the U.S. Courts of Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts. All tables are in PDF.
Source: U.S. Courts
The Population Reference Bureau’s 2008 World Population Data Sheet and its summary report offer detailed information about country, regional, and global population patterns.
Source: Population Reference Bureau
From the National Science Foundation:
Science and Engineering State Profiles: 2005-07
Material in XLS and PDF formats.
Source: NSF
La Paz, Ariz., Population is Nation’s Oldest County
La Paz County, Ariz. — located on the California border and home to the Colorado River Indian Reservation — has the country’s oldest population, according to U.S. Census Bureau county population estimates by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin released today. Webb County (Laredo), Texas — on the Mexican border in the southern part of the state — has the country’s youngest population, with children younger than 5 comprising 12.8 percent.
La Paz — with 32 percent of its population 65 or older on July 1, 2007 — led 24 counties with at least one-quarter of their populations 65 or older. Nine of these counties were in Florida, with four in Texas and three in Michigan.
Meanwhile, 302 counties, or nearly one in every 10, are “majority-minority” — meaning the county had a population with more than 50 percent minority residents.
Among the majority-minority counties with a minority population of 1 million or more were Bronx, N.Y.; Miami-Dade, Fla.; Los Angeles, Calif.; Queens, N.Y.; Bexar (San Antonio) and Dallas, Texas; San Bernardino, Calif.; Kings (Brooklyn), N.Y.; Harris (Houston), Texas; Santa Clara (San Jose) and Riverside, Calif.; Cook (Chicago), Ill.; and Orange, Calif.
Los Angeles County had the largest minority population in the country in 2007. At 7 million, or 71 percent of its total, Los Angeles County was home to one in every 14 of the nation’s minority residents. The county’s minority population was higher than the total population of all but 12 states.
Maricopa County, Ariz., gained 79,000 minority residents between 2006 and 2007, to lead the nation. Maricopa (Phoenix is its largest city) now has a minority population of 1.6 million, comprising 41 percent of its total. Its minority population ranks seventh nationally.
Based on total population, Starr County in south Texas had the highest proportion of minorities of all counties, at 98 percent. All but two of the top 10 counties in this category were along or near the Mexican border.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Two new reports!
++ State Transportation Statistics 2007
This report presents a statistical profile of transportation in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
++ Transportation Statistics Annual Report 2007
This report presents selected transportation data on 13 topics specified in the legislative mandate of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Source: BTS
The Queens Library issued a news release on Friday morning boasting that, yet again, it had the highest circulation last year of any public library system in the United States.
The Public Library Data Service Statistical Report, issued by the American Library Association, found that the Queens Library loaned 21,033,861 items in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2007. The Multnomah County Public Library in Oregon, which includes Portland, was No. 2, with 19,589,530 loans.
The Queens Library system has been No. 1 in the national ranking many times before — including last year — so this latest news was no surprise.
Source: NY Times
The full text of the Foundation Yearbook is a fee-based document but highlights are available here at no charge. (PDF)
The edition’s key findings include:
* Overall foundation giving rose 10 percent in 2007 to an estimated $42.9 billion
* Giving by the nation’s more than 72,000 grantmaking foundations increased 7.1 percent in 2006 to $39 billion
* Assets of all active U.S. foundations were up 11.6 percent to a record $614.7 billion in 2006
* The West posted the fastest rate of growth in number of foundations, total giving, and assets in 2006
Source: Foundation Center
Disability and Health in the United States, 2001-2005
89 pages; PDF.
Nearly 30% of adults have problems performing basic actions…
Source: NCHS
National Transportation Statistics 2008 - Second Quarter Update
This report presents basic information on America’s transportation system.
Source: BTS
Resource of the Week: More Niche Statistics
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
Judging by the e-mail we got and the number of links-to-us, last week’s collection of niche statistics was somewhat of a hit. Well, there are plenty more in our ever-growing collection. So here is another handful of fishing holes for interesting numbers.
ATA produces the Airline Cost Index to monitor trends in the cost of inputs (e.g., labor, fuel, food, aircraft ownership, airport landing fees, insurance, utilities, interest) to the provision of air service over time. The various indices also facilitate comparisons among the components themselves and between airline costs and broader economic indicators. Long-term cost trends are important determinants of airfares.
The airline industry is perpetually in the news. See why.
+ National Transportation Safety Board: Aviation Accident Statistics
The official U.S. government source of data concerning aviation accidents, fatalities, injuries, etc. Regularly updated. One particularly intriguing table: Air Carrier Occurrences Involving Illegal Acts
(Sabotage, Suicide, or Terrorism), 1988 through 2007.
+ Port Industry Statistics
Brought to you by the American Association of Port Authorities, this collection includes data in PDF or xls format concerning:
Other fishing holes for port/shipping statistics include:
+ Regional Economic Conditions (RECON) (FDIC)
Regional Economic Conditions (RECON) was originally designed to assist the FDIC in the examination process by providing economic information at the state, MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area), and county levels. It is helpful in the analysis of risks facing financial institutions. We believe that easy access to timely, high-quality information about economic conditions and risks could be of benefit to some banks, as well as the general public.
Using RECON, anyone with internet access is able to drill down to any state, MSA, or county to view standard graphs, tables, and maps depicting economic conditions and how they have changed over time.
RECON contains a ’shopping cart’ feature that allows the user to assemble charts and tables of interest and then print them together at the end of their session.
Economic data is arranged by geography. Start by choosing a state from the dropdown menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
We like this one because it allows us to access county- and MSA-level economic performance data that is updated regularly. Your tax dollars at work.
+ Transportation Construction Employment Report
This monthly report, from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, is its own little economic indicator. It provides detailed information on highway, street, bridge and tunnel contractor employment, including trends.
+ WebCASPAR: Integrated Science and Engineering Resources Data System
The WebCASPAR database provides easy access to a large body of statistical data resources for science and engineering (S&E) at U.S. academic institutions. WebCASPAR emphasizes S&E, but its data resources also provide information on non-S&E fields and higher education in general.
This National Science Foundation resource includes a wide range of statistics on such things as earned doctorates, federal research funding, R&D expenditures at institutions of higher learning, research facilities, and more.
New Report: America’s Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2008
America’s Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2008, continues the tradition of cooperation and commitment by agencies across the Federal Government to advance our understanding of children today and indicate what may be needed to bring them a better tomorrow. The Forum is already busy planning its next full report, scheduled for 2009.
Source: The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics
Resources of the Week: Niche Statistics
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
I am not a specialist. I am a generalist. Numerous times in the course of the average workweek, I am asked for something I’ve never even tried to find before. Probably more than half the time, this involves statistics. Almost always, I can ferret out something useful and — most important — make it look easy.
Dial M for magician.
The actual moral truth is — no matter what the subject, someone or some entity Out There is collecting statistics about it. Find the appropriate source and you are golden. Here are half a dozen examples.
+ Center for National Truck and Bus Statistics
The Center for National Truck and Bus Statistics was established in 1988 to formalize the national program to collect and analyze truck accident data, which had begun with the 1980 data year. Since then the program has expanded to include a survey of bus crashes.
This site is located at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. What’s here? All manner of statistics about truck and bus crashes and miscellaneous publications. The latest data, published in 2008, is from 2005.
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+ Wedding Industry Research, from Library of Congress Business Reference Services.
Let us be clear at the beginning. This is not a guide on how to plan a wedding, but rather on how to find information on the business of weddings.
Click on the “Statistics” link and have a look at what’s there. Besides the “usual suspects” — Census Bureau, National Center for Health Statistics, Statistical Abstract of the United States — you’ll also find links to:
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+ Rodney Fort’s Sports Economics: Sports Business Data
Professor Fort, who teaches at the University of Michigan, is one of the nation’s preeminent sports economists. The collection of data here is staggering in both depth and breadth. Fort has assembled years of salary, attendance, and financial information for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and English and European football associations. If it’s not here, you are likely to have a very difficult time trying to find it — especially for free, on the open Web.
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+ DoD Personnel and Military Casualty Statistics, from the U.S. Department of Defense Statistical Information Analysis Division.
This is the type of data that is requested over and over and over again, at least where I’ve worked.
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+ Tax Statistics, from the Statistics of Income Division and Other Areas of the Internal Revenue Service
Say what you want about the IRS, but they are extremely efficient at compiling and disseminating data. Find business tax statistics (foreign and domestic), individual tax statistics (including personal wealth), data related to IRS operations, statistics related to charitable organizations and nonprofits, various and sundry reports and — this is particularly interesting — statistics by actual tax form, for various years.
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+ Intercountry Adoption Statistics, from the U.S. Department of State
These are basically tables that show the number of immigrant visas issued to orphans entering the U.S., for the top 20 countries, by year, back to 1990. More detailed information for FY 2007 is available as a separate report (PDF; 53 KB).
The Academic Libraries: 2006 First Look summarizes services, staff, collections, and expenditures of academic libraries in 2- and 4-year, degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The nation’s 3,600 academic libraries held 1.0 billion books; serial backfiles; and other paper materials, including government documents at the end of FY 2006, and there were 144.1 million circulation transactions from their general collections. During the same time period, academic libraries’ expenditures totaled $6.2 billion.
+ Full Report (PDF; 1.1 MB)
+ Supplemental Table (PDF; 169 KB)