Storms Also Shifted Demographics, Census Finds

In the four months following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the population of the New Orleans metropolitan area became substantially whiter, older and less poor, and it shrank to less than half its size, according to statistics released today by the Census Bureau.

The figures were drawn from estimates of the hurricane-affected areas along the Gulf Coast as of Jan. 1, and cover 117 counties initially designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for individual or public assistance. Separate data from the Census Bureau’s 2005 American Community Survey, or ACS, analyzed demographic, socioeconomic and housing characteristics of the population in those counties.

Census officials and demographers said the new statistics provided the most comprehensive post-Katrina population and demographic figures to date.

“The data from the ACS provides the first quantitative data in support of anecdotal stories we have read and seen on television for the past nine months,” said Lisa Blumerman, deputy chief of the ACS, which typically produces annual estimates of population and housing characteristics after a full year of data collection. This time, however, ACS divided the 2005 data into an eight-month period before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and a four-month period after the storms.

Census officials acknowledged that because of the survey’s shorter time period, and the smaller sample size because of difficulties in conducting interviews immediately after the storms in flood-ravaged areas such as Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, “the reliability of the estimates is reduced.”

Parishes and counties were combined into metropolitan statistical areas, and the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The biggest population loss was experienced in metropolitan New Orleans, which includes seven parishes, and in the Mississippi Gulf Coast counties of Harrison and Hancock, and part of the Gulfport-Biloxi area also in Mississippi.

The population of Orleans fell from 437,186 in July 2005 to 158,353 after the storms. Nearby St. Bernard Parish lost 95% of its residents.

The New Orleans metro area’s population was 37% black between January and August 2005 and fell to 22% between September and December 2005. The percentage of white residents grew from 60% to 73%. Households earning between $10,000 and $14,999 annually dropped from 8.3% to 6.5%; while those with a yearly income of between $75,000 and $99,999 rose from 10.5% to 11.4%.

“It’s become substantially whiter, less poor, and there is a greater percentage of the area’s people who have high-valued homes, or who are paying higher values of rent,” said William H. Frey, a demographer and visiting fellow at Washington’s Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, which analyzed the new census figures. “The changes also tend to impact the family structure and household. There is a decline in poverty.”

Frey added that the disproportionate out-migration of lower-income and black residents to destinations farther away from New Orleans had likely slowed the return of such residents, because they lacked the finances, did not own their property, or if they did, the property might have been destroyed.

The percentage of households that were renters dropped from 36% to 27%, Frey said.

While population numbers have drastically decreased in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, a dramatic rise has occurred in cities such as Houston and Baton Rouge, which absorbed large numbers of displaced people.

Harris County, where Houston is located, gained some 92,000 people in the last six months of 2005, according to the Brookings analysis of the census data. East Baton Rouge saw a population spike of about 4% in four months.

“Blacks tended to move to where they had relatives and friends or where they were first evacuated to,” Frey said. People who relocated to nearby towns such as Baton Rouge tended to be middle class and own cars.

Blumerman, the census official, said other significant findings for the New Orleans area in the four months after Katrina included: The number of people who were living in a different home rose from 13% a year ago to 21% in January; the median age of residents had increased from 38 to 42; and, in Louisiana’s federally designated hurricane-related assistance zones, the number of people in need of food stamps went from 12% to 31%.

Louisiana state officials said that while the data was useful, it was just “a snapshot.”

“It’s a partial picture of the changes,” said Karen Paterson, a demographer at the Louisiana State Census Data Center.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

After the hurricanes

Metropolitan New Orleans has become older, whiter and more prosperous since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck last summer:

*--* Jan. through Sept. through Aug. 2005 Dec. 2005 Population: 1,190,615 723,830 Median age: 38 42 Income: $39,793 $43,447 Race - White: 59% 73% - African American: 37% 22% - Other: 4% 5%

*--*

Note: Metropolitan area includes New Orleans, Metairie and Kenner.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau