Charts of the week: Civics education, demographic shifts, and regional neighborhood pricing

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Are high school students participating in civics activities?

In the recently released Brown Center Report on American Education, Governance Studies experts analyze how states are ensuring their students are receiving a high-quality civics education. The authors identify a framework for determining what constitutes high-quality in this case and present an inventory of which states’ policies follow that framework and its best practices. In addition to that inventory, the report considers what civics-oriented activities students participate in and charts that data from a 2010 student survey in the figure below.

U.S. Census Bureau annual statistics show an absolute decline in white non-Hispanic populations

Using new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Senior Fellow William Frey analyzes the emerging shifts between America’s aging white population and younger, more diverse generations. Frey writes: “new data suggest that a signature feature of U.S. demographic change in the 21st century is the aging and decline of the white population, along with population growth among young minorities to counterbalance the trend.” The map below illustrates the county-level decline of white populations across the country.

Metropolitan areas near fresh water tend to have the lowest price-income ratios

In their new report on U.S. housing prices, David M. Rubenstein Fellow Jenny Schuetz and Cecile Murray compare the ratio of house prices to household incomes and asses how neighborhood ratios are distributed across the country. They find that metropolitan areas along the Great Lakes tend to have lower ratios than both coastal and inland regions.