Community Corner

Two Ways of Looking at Hopkins Census Data

Hopkins' nature all depends on how you look at it.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

That’s the executive summary of this decade’s Census results.

Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released results from its 2008-10 American Community Survey. Full details on education, income, health insurance and more are available only for cities with more than 20,000 people—a size just over Hopkins’ 17,591 population.

Find out what's happening in Hopkinswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Yet the details that are available suggest a community caught in the middle of two contradictory trends: fast-changing demographics and stable living patterns.

Here are two ways to look at Census data.

Find out what's happening in Hopkinswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

 

Hopkins is changing dramatically.

  • Race and ethnicity: There is no doubting that Hopkins’ population at least looks different. The proportion of people who identify themselves as white dropped by 12 points over the past decade. The black population, which more than doubled, accounted for a large part of this shift—surging past Asians and Latinos to become the second-largest group in Hopkins. But all minority groups saw growth except for American Indians and Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders. Conversely, the white population shrank by 13 percent. Diversity is a frequent topic of conversation among school and city officials.

 

Hopkins is still the same community it once was.

  • Aging in place: Planners have worried in recent years that the housing crisis encouraged parents to stay in their homes after their children have moved out—instead of making way for other families with children. This could lead to declining enrollment at schools, resulting in a funding pinch. Yet Hopkins has more children making up slightly more of the population than they did a decade ago. The proportion of families with children grew even as the number of families overall grew—leading to a tiny uptick in the average family size. Meanwhile, the number of older adults shrank in both absolute numbers and as a percentage.
  • Rental properties: The stable demographics above perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise because Hopkins still has few of the owner-occupied homes that are most susceptible to the aging-in-place trend. Although the portion of rentals dropped a bit, they still account for three out of every five housing units. This fact of life will continue to dominate Hopkins planning for the foreseeable future.
  • Cohabitation: Journalists have written copiously about young couples , and Minnesota is set for a debate over gay marriage—which the Census classifies the same way in the household category. Yet unmarried partners are still an exceptionally small part of Hopkins’ landscape. Although the number grew 17 percent, that doesn’t mean as much when the 2010 total accounted for just 3.2 percent of Hopkins households.
  • Traditional families: And even as the number of unmarried partners remains small, the number of husband-wife families has stayed constant. The number of such “traditional families” grew over the past decade—but at the same rate as Hopkins’ population growth. Still, “family” continues to be the exception, not the rule, in this community full of apartments and other rental properties. Non-family households accounted for more than half of households in 2010, just as they did in 2000.

***

Hopkins U.S. Census Data


2000 2010
Total Percent Total Percent Population
Total 17,145
17,591
Younger than 18 3,360
 19.6 3,718
21.1
18+ 13,785 80.4 13,873 78.9 62+ 2,776 16.2 2,663 15.1 85+ 680 4.0 619 3.5 Race and ethnicity

White 14,164 82.6 12,384 70.4 Black 890 5.2 2,371 13.5 American Indian/Alaskan Native 124 0.8 104 0.6 Asian 1,015 5.9 1,494 8.5 Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 15 0.1 8 0.0 Hispanic/Latino* 949 5.5 1,390 7.9 Relationships
Householder 8,224 48.0 8,366 47.6 Spouse 2,583 15.1 2,628 14.9 Child 3,795 22.1 4,313 24.5 Nonrelatives 1,552 9.1 1,308 7.4 Unmarried partner 481 2.8 564 3.2 Households
Total households 8,224
8,366
Families 3,739 45.5 3,975 47.5 Families with children 1,870 22.7 1,968 23.5 Husband-wife family 2,583 31.4 2,628 31.4 Nonfamily 4,485 54.5 4,391 52.5 Average household size 2.03
2.07
Average family size 2.85
2.93
Housing^
Total units 8,390
8,987
Occupied 8,224 98.0 8,366 93.1 Owner-occupied 3,120 37.9 3,289 39.3 Renter-occupied 5,104 62.1 5,077 60.7 Average household, owner 2.37
2.3
Average household, renter 1.83
1.92

*Hispanic/Latino is a separate category from race in the Census report and may overlap with racial identifications.

^Except for the "occupied" category, all percentages in the housing section are based on total number of occupied units.


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