Talk:Demographics of the United States

Skip to table of contents

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Demographics of the United States article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2: 600 days

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

United States: Government Top‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject U.S. Government (assessed as High-importance).

Ethnic groups High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ethnic groups, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles relating to ethnic groups, nationalities, and other cultural identities on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Ethnic groupsWikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic groupsTemplate:WikiProject Ethnic groupsEthnic groups articles

High

This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Ethnic groups open tasks:

Here are some open WikiProject Ethnic groups tasks:

Meta-tasks:
- Place the {{Ethnic groups}} template on the talk page of articles within the scope of this project.
- Resolve the disparity in importance rankings among different ethnic groups
Articles about ethnic groups that currently have issues needing resolution:
Start an article:
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic groups/Article requests

Feel free to edit this list or discuss these tasks.

Geography Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Geography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of geography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GeographyWikipedia:WikiProject GeographyTemplate:WikiProject Geographygeography articles

Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Geography To-do list:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : See Requested articles/Social sciences/Geography, cities, regions and named places and Missing articles about Locations
Assess : Tag related article talk pages with {{WikiProject Geography}}. To help assess the quality and importance of geography articles, please see: Unassessed geography articles and Unknown-importance geography articles.
Cleanup : See Geography articles needing attention
Deletion sorting : Listed at Geographic related deletion discussions
Geographical coordinates : See Articles missing geocoordinate data by country
Infobox : See Geography articles needing infoboxes
Map : See Wikipedia requested maps
Notability : See Geography articles with topics of unclear notability
Photo : See Wikipedia requested photographs of places
Stubs : See Geography stubs

Sociology High‑importance

	Society portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Statistics Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Statistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of statistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.StatisticsWikipedia:WikiProject StatisticsTemplate:WikiProject StatisticsStatistics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.

The static population pyramid image with ethnicities marked is blatantly inaccurate

It doesn't reflect the real composition. Whites are 57.8% of the total, whereas this image shows about 80%. What is this, the 50s? According to the image, the least white age bracket is still 71% white (age 0), which is mathematically impossible. Can anyone explain the discrepancy? MrThe1And0nly (talk) 09:58, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@MrThe1And0nly For quick clarity are you on about this one? I agree that it does look odd on the lack of Hispanic's on the population pyramid compared to the Black population, which atleast seems larger on there when it shouldn't. I am neither sure on what the year the population pyramid attains to either, maybe it is 2010? However the file was made in 2021. Feel free to remove and I will create one for this either today or tommorow. Tweedle (talk) 12:03, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ah I believe I have found the discrepency, using the data table 1/1/2020 to 6/1/2020 from Monthly Postcensal Resident Population plus Armed Forces Overseas from the source file on the original image, using the first month;

If you look at the column for Non-Hispanic White newborns (0) for males for example it is below 1 million at 957,909 however looking at White alone Male 0 year olds it is 1,389,975 which would match up better to what is shown so I believe the original creator must have used the wrong race columns. Ofcourse this is assuming that it is based off of the 2020 file, however I do not believe there would be an extra 400,000 odd babies for Non-Hispanic Whites in any of the years previous. Looking at the 2010 file, 0 year old non-Hispanic White males are 1,021,535

Fixed this now with my own, see image attached to this section now. Tweedle (talk) 15:16, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tweedle (talk) 12:22, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nice, you fixed it. My bad, I thought I had linked the image I was talking about but seem to have forgotten. And you switched the inaccurate image for the correct one in other topics as well. Thanks. MrThe1And0nly (talk) 17:53, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No problem! Tweedle (talk) 20:54, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with references

I noticed that the numbers in the section "Dependency ratio" seemed unreasonable, so I followed the references and confirmed that they should be percentages. However, ref 32 ( https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-national-detail.html ) does not provide the ratios. It gives a link to an XL spreadsheet with populations in different categories, which can be combined to calculate the ratios. Is this OK?

Note, too, that the cited page and data have been updated for 2022, so its values are no longer exactly the same as those in the Wikipedia page.

Also, I don't see the country rankings in ref 42 ( https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/dependency-ratios/ ). Maybe an older version of the page included them?

Fcy (talk) 18:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would remove the country comparison as they are not dated to a specific year and I have no clue what year they pertain to. On the calculation, yeah that's fine I would not worry about that. Most references on Demography stuff is usually excel spreadsheets and the like, so long as the figure is correct it does not matter that much. Tweedle (talk) 18:31, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Missing "per thousand", maybe

American women are remarkable , but it’s hard to believe there are 1,663.5 births per every woman. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:55, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Possible typo in Nationality Chart

Within the introductory table on the right, I'm seeing "Mixted Latino (6.12%)". I don't see other references to Mixted elsewhere so probably just an input error. 216.83.83.25 (talk) 15:15, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nationality table in infobox

A table of nationalities was added to the infobox by @2800:40:2F:73E8:78AB:256B:45DC:E5C6 on 4 May 2024 in Special:Diff/1222161032, sourced to this US Census page. Recently @Kevinb1999 changed one of the entries from "Polish" to "Greek". I went back to the Census page to verify whether it says Polish or Greek, but I am unable to find anything about nationality in that page. Can anyone else see where this data is coming from? CodeTalker (talk) 15:45, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

total population, total adult population

Where is this info? Espoo (talk) 03:12, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the article EvergreenFir (talk) 04:18, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Life expectancy figures

Life expectancy figures in the infobox look bogus because according to the UN data US' LE is 78 years not 80.8 years as this infobox shows. 203.81.242.123 (talk) 12:27, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]