Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, March 15, 2011,
Item 2
>> number two is to receive presentation on Travis County snapshot from american community 2009 report.
morning.
>> good morning.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, sherri fleming county executive for health and human services.
and veteran service.
today we have a brief presentation for you today describing the -- our analysis of the american community survey, which is a product of the u.s.
census bureau.
and staff will talk about that in just a minute.
but we've heard a lot about the census figures for our community in recent weeks, but the american community survey is the data we have used in the past five years or so to look at our community in more detail.
ainld suggest that this detail guides a lot of our recommendations around policy and programming and so we believe it's important for you to hear that today.
I turn you over to rachel cough.
>> good morning.
rachel cough.
>> I'm anna lisa (indiscernible).
>> I'm elizabeth bella also with research and planning.
>> and thank you for having us here today.
>> okay.
>> as the research and planning division of health and human services and veterans service, one of our essential program components is to inform the community.
some of our goals in this area are to improve knowledge and understanding of community conditions and needs.
and to increase stakeholder capacity to make decisions, develop programs and secure funding.
to that end we offer a variety of information services for our customers, which includes our census-based products pictured on the slide as well as other reports you are familiar with such as our community impact report.
today we are here primarily to present highlights from our american community survey reports, which we have published annually since 2003 and formatted as a chart book since 2006.
this report is an annual point in time snapshot of the community across a variety of variables relevant to the human services.
we would also like to mention that as new data becomes increasingly available, particularly from the u.s.
census bureau, it also becomes more complex.
this offers us more opportunities to meet community's information needs.
and this year we are rolling out two new products that expand our information services.
the first is our e test supplement reports, which will offer a picture of selected topics.
and the second is a data service to help customers with specific data needs.
and we will briefly outline both of these new products at the end of this presentation on the Travis County snapshot.
so first we would like to briefly overview some key census data products because they are sources we frequently reference.
the census bureau produces a large number of data products and administers a wide variety of surveys.
two of the most well-known are the de17 yell census and the american community faye.
the de'17 yel census conducted once every 10 years show the number of people who live in the u.s.
while the american community survey conducted every year shows how they live.
while it reports on basic population counts, the american community survey can give us more descriptive demographics, socio, economic and housing characteristics.
another important distinction between these two sources is the decenial census is characteristics while the american survey is sample characteristics.
this table shows a few more samples of the american community survey.
the ecs data is released as period estimates in increments of one, three or five years of data.
these different period estimates each have their pros and cons around things like the populations described, reliability and how current the data is.
because of its frequency and it's wide variety of content and the flexibility to choose different period estimates depending on the data that's needed, the american community survey is a good source for local, current information, for current like ours that is changing quickly.
for our Travis County snapshot, because we want to look at the entire county population, and because we want the most current data available for a point in time snapshot, we focus primarily on the one-year data.
most of the information we are presenting today is the one-year estimate as its source.
so now a quick introduction to our chart book.
the Travis County snapshot from the american community survey is our annual chart book and we include three focus areas.
social, economic and housing characteristics.
we selected key variables in each area that are relevant to the human service and then analyzed them for relationships and trends and presented them in visually compelling ways.
the chart book provides a point in time snapshot of our local community.
for the most part current 2009 data is referenced to show at a glance the current state of affairs of Travis County.
second we summarize community conditions.
we describe the demographic landscape of the entire Travis County community, looking at the whole geography of the county and large community-wide populations.
third we try to be informative, accessible and reproducible to the readers.
so to this end we present data in easy to read charts and tables along with some texts to provide context and highlight meaningful information.
we hope this report helps our customers in their efforts to improve programs, influence funding decisions and shape local policies.
we encourage our readers to borrow and use this material.
>> now we'll present highlights from this year's report.
again, this is available online, every topic.
today I'm just going to go through a couple and then liz will present some and then back to me.
>> just to set some context we'll look at overall population growth over the past decade.
this chart, here we go, this chart displays a change in total population from 2000 to 2009 for u.s., Texas and Travis County.
and in 2009 the total population for Travis County was jution over one million.
as you can see the county has grown at a faster rate than the state or the nation.
this chart displays a number of proportion of people age 25 years and older by their educational attainment level.
as the snapshot data book has shown, Travis County continues to have a highly educated population with 43 percent of Travis County residents with a bachelor's degree or higher.
in comparison, 26 percent of texans and 28 percent of americans report having a college degree.
residents with less than a high school diploma shown at the far left side of the chart comprise about 15 percent of the population age 25 and older.
and in comparison about 20% of texans have a high school diploma or less.
on this side it displays several variables related to language.
I'm going to go through some of the components on the slide.
the museumium brown bars indicate the languages spoken at home, by the population five and over.
and just taking into account all of the languages spoken at home, about one-third of the Travis County population speaks a language other than english at home.
and in comparison about 20% of u.s.
residents and 34 percent of texans speak a language other than english at home.
the pie charts above the bars indicate the ability to speak english by the language spoken at home.
as you can see, about 51% of Travis County residents who speak a language other than english at home also speak the english language very well.
about 49% speak english less than very well.
this isn't shown on the slide, but we also look at how many households are considered linguistically isolated.
a linguistically isolated household is one in which house members over 14 years old have difficulty with the english language.
in Travis County about eight percent of households are considered linguistically isolated and about eight percent of those households speak spanish.
>> I'm going to go over some economic characteristics.
we're going to talk about income data, poverty, employment and health insurance.
this slide shows the relationship between the median household income as reported in 1999 through 2009 and the median household income for those same years adjusted to $2,009.
the bottom line, which is dark brown, shows the median household income as was reported while the dark brown line, which is on the top, shows the same figures adjusted for inflation.
because inflation arose the purchasing power of money, if we want to see how median household income has changed in our community, we have to remove its effect by converting each income figure into the same units.
in this case $2,009.
once we adjust for inflation, we can see that the real value of the median household income has fallen over the last decade.
in fact, the actual value of Travis County's median household income was almost $7,000 lower in 2009 than in 1999.
also note that the reported median income has fallen by nearly four percent from the 2008 value, ending a four-year upward trend.
>> could you tell -- maybe have an explanation for such a significant drop in a 10-year period as far as income is concerned?
was there a reason for it?
that you can --
>> is --
>> a significant drop as far as income.
>> the drop in the real value?
>> yeah.
>> I could speculate.
I feel more comfortable getting back to you after court.
>> okay.
that would be good.
because I'm really concerned about that.
the reason why I'm posing these questions, -- well, we had a work session here a bit ago and of course we discussed significant barriers, those indicators that suggest how could we actually deal with the low -- the country employment of our low income here in Travis County.
of course, there are reasons for a lot of significant drops, as you just mentioned, but again, I know the figures are still significantly higher in Travis County, especially in the poor side of the county where folks have not had the opportunity to get gainful employment.
I'm trying to connect all of these things together.
so that's why I'm posing the question because I think there is a direct relationship in my mind as far as looking at how we can deal with the employment opportunities for the low income, unemployed and undergd.
but really low income.
>> yes, sir.
>> I'm trying to connect the dots here.
I'm going to let you go on, but I'm just letting you know I'm coming to get some answers for you.
>> yes, sir.
>> Commissioner, I would say that the short answer is with regard to the value of income is purchasing power.
so what were you able to purchase with a similar amount of money in 1999 verse what --
>> inflation.
>> yes.
so the cost of living has a lot to do with -- the cost of housing, the cost of food, those things.
>> but employment opportunities, okay.
thank you.
>> this next slide shows the number and percent of Travis County residents living in poverty.
the left most bar shows individuals of all ages and moving to the right we have children under 18, followed by adults 18 to 64.
on the right adults 65 and over.
the county's poverty rates among individuals which are at 16 percent and children which are at 23 percent, remain significantly higher than in 1999 when 13 percent of individuals and 14 percent of children lived below the poverty threshold.
in 2009 the child poverty rate in the county reached a 10-year high, up by four percentage points from the previous year.
we can see that children are dispro forgs natalie represented among the poor, comprising under one quarter of the total county population, but more than a third of those living in poverty.
this next slide shows the relationship between income and the poverty level.
the ratio of income to poverty looks at a household's income and compares this with the poverty threshold for that household size.
the thresholds take into account household site and composition and are listed in the box to the left of the pie.
examining this relationship can be useful not only for categorizing people as above or below the poverty line, but also to measure the degree of poverty and near poverty conditions in a given community.
in Travis County an estimated 164,000 individuals or 16 percent of the population live in households with incomes below the poverty threshold.
this means that 16 percent of the total population of the county were living on $11,000 annually for a single person or about $22,000 annually for a family of four.
an additional 10 percent or 98,000 people live between 100 to 149 percent of the poverty threshold.
nine percent or 91,000 live between 150 to 199 percent of the poverty threshold.
so taken together this amounts to over one-third of Travis County living in poverty or at risk of poverty.
and we know that 65 percent of Travis County residents or an estimated 650,000 -- 657,000 individuals live at or above 200 percent of the poverty threshold.
this next slide shows the relationship between education levels and unemployment rates for the population age 25 to 64 who are in the labor force in Travis County.
these bars represent the labor force by level of educational attainment.
the light brown circle above each bar represents the rate of unemployment per education level.
we know that workforce trends generally predict that unemployment decreases as education levels increase.
as this slide shows, those with the highest education attainment levels in the county also have the lowest unemployment, which is about four percent for those with a bachelor's degree or higher.
we can also see that's the -- those with the lowest educational levels have the highest unemployment, about 13 percent for those with less than a high school degree.
though not depicted in this slide, the economic section of the chart book does show that there is a similar and direct relationship between educational attainment and earnings.
so as education level increases, earnings also rise.
>> is that education based on, what, a degree?
was it based on skill set?
I'm looking at skill set because that -- is that in the equation?
>> no, sir.
this is measuring just the level of attainment.
>> yes, sir.
whether you graduate from high school, whether you have a bachelor's degree, etcetera.
>> okay.
because like I say, I'm going to use this as a tool looking for some kind of a change or approach.
I think this would be a great tool in an economic issue.
but if skills are something that we may also need to be looking at, and I know you took a snapshot of this, but I'm looking at skill sets because you may have persons that may not have acquired a high school diploma nor a college degree, but they have great skill sets and are doing quite well because of their skills.
so I want to make sure that somewhere along the line -- I know you wasn't looking at this when you did this.
I'm not accusing anybody, but I'm saying there are other I think avenues that we could travel on to look at opportunities, especially if we acquire and look at the persons out here whether they can acquire skill sets as opposed to everybody just going to college or everybody get -- we're not trying to discourage anybody from doing it, but also I think the opportunity for learning skills ought to be part of the equation.
when we look at some of these things as we go forward.
I think it's a major component in my opinion.
these are things that I'm going to look forward and go in that direction.
I didn't mean to throw you off.
I wanted to make a comparison here as far as throwing it in here as far as one of the ingredients we need to look at.
thank you.
>> thank you.
the last slide in this section is health insurance.
this chart shows the proportions of insured and uninsured residents of Travis County.
its insured and uninsured residents of all ages are represented in the pie.
while uninsured resident are broken out by age in the bar to right.
as you can see in Travis County 23 percent of residents do not have health insurance.
of these approximately 234,000 uninsured individuals, the largest proportion were about 194,000 are adults between the ages of 18 and 64.
four percent of the total population are about 39,000 individuals are under 18.
and we know that the number of persons 65 and over who are living without health insurance is slightly over 2,000.
and that concludes the economic section.
>> so the last section of the report describes Travis County housing characteristics.
and today I'm just going to go over one of them.
so this chart displays housing cost burden for owners on the left and renters on the right.
it's not on the slide, but just to provide some context, we want to share that in Travis County just over half or 52 percent of occupied units are owner-occupied.
and the remaining 48 percent are renter occupied.
so just over half of our housing units in Travis County are owned by their homeowners.
the pie charts show how much of the income goes towards covering housing costs.
and note that housing cost spending 30% or more of their income on those housing costs are defined as having a housing cost burden.
and those spending 50% or more of their income are considered to have a severe housing cost burden.
and in Travis County a large percentage of both renters and owners experience housing cost burden; however, the cost burden rate is much higher among renters.
almost half of renters spend at least 30% or more of their income on housing and almost one-quarter spend at least half of their income on housing.
in comparison among owners, about 28 percent spend that 30% more of their income on housing and 10 percent spend at least half.
>> that concludes our summary of the data highlights from the Travis County snapshot.
and now we'd like to briefly introduce the new data products that we mentioned at the beginning of the presentation.
the first is our hs supplement reports which are intended to paint a picture of selected topics in our community over longer time periods nand greater detail.
we will release these supplements on a periodic basis when issues are identified for further exploration or when new data becomes available.
the first planned supplement report will focus on the topic of poverty and provide a higher level of context and analysis than what is currently included in the annual chart book.
it will use the american community survey 2005 through 2009 fire-year estimates.
because the five-year data set is from a larger sample, it gives us the ability to make more nuanced comparisons.
this work is still in initial stages, but could explore the following topics.
first it will look at poverty in Travis County at the neighborhood level such as census tracks and block groups and allow us to see where in our community poverty is most concentrated.
the supplement will also examine the characteristics of people living in poverty such as comparing poverty rates among subpopulations and considering how other factors such as educational attainment or employment status influence the poverty rates.
finally the supplement will look at changes in our community over time and how we rank in comparison to other communities.
a tentative publication date is set for may 2011.
lastly, our second new offering from rnp this year is the data access and technical assistance service.
with this service we hope to assist customers who are engaged in local service delivery and community planning efforts, who have specific information needs that might not be met by the annual Travis County snapshot or the more detailed supplement reports.
for those customers our information service might assist them with tasks such as program design, resource development or policy and funding decisions.
we hope that the data service will complement our pickup publications in our efforts to inform the community.
and we will formally roll out this service in the coming months.
the snapshot can be viewed and downloaded on our page of the Travis County website, which is shown on the slide.
and we encourage you -- we encourage you to read and cite the material.
any questions or comments can be sent to us at the e-mail address on the slide.
thank you very much.
>> questions or comments?
>> thank you.
>> now, so this is part of a larger report.
>> yes.
those are selected highlights from the larger report, which is available on the web page.
>> all right.
there are no hard copies of the full report available?
>> not really.
we're trying to switch over to green practices and we're encouraging online viewing.
>> that's a good idea.
so if I go to online, I can print a readable copy.
>> yes.
>> okay.
if we go to the part dealing with the education, I would like to see at a later time the -- I can understand why we started at age 25 and went up to 65 or so, but I would like to see the number of dropouts between 18 and 25 and then between 21 and 25.
just for high school dropouts.
>> okay.
>> and the other thing is this information is good, knowing the poverty rate, knowing where poor people reside, knowing the level of education, employment, etcetera.
so when do we start addressing some of thee issues?
is that when we turn to miss fleming and ask her what's going on?
>> [ laughter ]
>> yes, sir, that's exactly right.
this information is critical to our community because our interests in health and human services is to accurately reflect the state of our community.
and so we encourage and we strongly hope that persons in our community who are addressing these issues would use this as a source for information.
but this is where we begin.
and when we look at resources outside this community, we have to be able to accurately reflect the problem that we're trying to address.
so we believe that this data that we have gleaned from the census bureau actually third-party source, so that it's not owrt report of what is going on in our community, but a third-party documentation of what's going on, then that helps us to make the case for additional resources from the federal and state sources at a time prior to right now.
>> right.
>> judge, you asked for the dropout rates for those 18 to 25?
and then what was the other?
>> 21 to 25.
>> 21 to 25.
but I think there's a problem with kids younger than that in terms of the dropout rate.
and that needs to be addressed even earlier, I think.
because I think 21 to 25 is going to show the result of the issue of dropouts not being addressed, but what can we do to prevent those dropout rates from that group of people getting to the dropout rate?
>> I think staff can look for that data.
it may be available from the census bureau and it may be available from the Texas education agency for those ages below 18.
there is a tremendous amount of data available and I think one of the things that is important for us to note is that we try to mine the same data annually so that we can establish friends, but it is possible -- staff has great command of the data after so many years of looking at it.
so there are other data elements that may be available that can answer those questions.
>> well, I think the other issue that needs to be addressed is the cultural issue that will figure in on the -- on people dropping out of school because it isn't as important or it's not considered to be as important as getting whatever job you can get to help the family.
and so I think the cultural part is going to be extremely important.
and one way that I think we can address that is through the churches.
the church is trying to be more involved with trying to make sure that good citizenship also includes a good education.
and so -- but I think we need to keep finding those ways of reaching more and more people who would not ordinarily be reached through ordinary means of disseminating information and reaching parents.
>> I think you've also keyed in, Commissioner Gomez, on if there's -- if there's any sort of factor that impacts the data we presented, it would be those cultural issues.
because we know there was a great effort in our community to engage folks around the census and we still did not reach 100% for a lot of those reasons.
so I think we have to caveat this work also with that, that often times people's responses are impacted by their understanding and cultural expectations around engaging with government.
>> and also, I guess, back on what I asked earlier, I'm still concerned I guess the whole gamut.
children go to school, but for whatever reason, they become disinterested in education.
and I don't know why that is -- nobody really can put their finger on it.
I think there are probably a lot of reasons.
but how can we of course continue to encourage persons to stay in school, to get the basic skill that you need as far as education is concerned.
I keep hearing we're harping on the high school diploma and further education, which is really good.
but let's face it, every person that attend our schools is not going to get a degree.
and of course, striving toward a high school diploma is something that we need to continue to insist on, but at the same token, I think that somewhere along the line skills should also be achieved or acquired.
an example, if you would like to go into plumbing, if you would like to go into a service-type industry, whatever it may be, electrician, refrigeration, there's a lot of skill sets out there that people have acquired and have done very, very well doing these skill sets.
I'm just trying to make sure that we don't leave anyone out of this equation because I think we all are in it and I think that skill sets to acquire for certain trades, while a person even is in school, may be something that we need to still look at.
I just want to make sure we cover all bases here.
so that's why I posed the question the way I asked it earlier because we're losing our children.
we're losing the workforce of the future with the significant dropout rates and a lot of other things that are going on.
this snapshot really does take a good picture of a lot of situations here, but I think that we need to address them the best we can as far as what we can do from Travis County's perspective, but it will take awful us to do it together, collaborative effort all across the board for this to happen.
I will be coming back and asking you for specific data as I asked before, which we do not have available, that may be available to us.
okay?
>> thank y'all very much.
see you next time.
keep up the good work.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, March, 2011 2:19 PM
