Missouri will lose a seat in the U.S. House of Representative, according to the Census 2010 results released on Tuesday.
The decision of which congressman will be out of the job comes before Missouri lawmakers and the governor next year. Currently, Missouri has nine seats in the U.S. House.
On Monday, Missouri House Speaker-Elect Steven Tilley (R-Perryville) announced the committee in charge of remapping the congressional districts. With eight Republicans and four Democrats on the committee, Democratic congressmen have cause to be nervous. Both state Rep. Jamilah Nasheed (D-St. Louis) and state Rep.-elect Penny Hubbard (D-St. Louis) are on the committee.
Legislators will officially begin to draw up maps when the Census Bureau releases the local-level data in February.
The first wave of Census results showed that Missouri’s population grew seven percent from 2000 to 2010, a decline from the 9.3 percent growth rate from 1990 to 2000.
Only one state had a negative growth rate, and that was Michigan.
As of April 2010, Missouri’s population was 5,988,927, and the country’s population was 308,745,538.
As a country, we grew by 9.7 percent, which is the second-lowest growth rate in the 23 times that the Census has been conducted. The lowest growth rate of 7.3 percent occurred during the Great Depression.
Which Congressman will it be?
All sort of scenarios are possible, said Terry Jones, professor of political science at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Each congressional district must now cover 700,000 people, and none has that number.
The reapportionment process – or the redrawing of congressional district boundaries – has occurred every 10 years since 1790, the year of the first census count. The 435 seats of the U.S. House of Representatives will be divided up among the 50 states based on population data provided by the 2010 census.
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who represents the Fifth Congressional District in Kansas City, has little to worry about, Jones said. St. Louis, on the other hand, has benefited from three congressional districts for decades.
“This would put that at risk,” Jones said. “One of the proposals is to have two congressional districts that include city and county. It would be in the region’s interest to oppose this.”
The three congressmen representing the St. Louis area are: First District’s Wm. Lacy Clay, representing North City and parts of north and west St. Louis County; Second district’s Todd Akin, representing parts of West County, St. Peters and Troy; and Third district’s Russ Carnahan, representing South City, Webster Groves and down to St. Genevieve.
Nasheed, who will sit on the Legislature’s redistricting committee, explicitly said she would defend Clay’s turf.
“I want to preserve the integrity of the First Congressional District as we move forward with this process,” Nasheed said.
Clay was unable to comment due to a death in the family.
Jones said another possibility is to oust one of the new congressmen elected in November, who are both Republicans. They are 7th District’s Billy Long, who will succeed Roy Blunt, or Fourth district’s Vicky Hartzler, who defeated Democrat Ike Skelton.
Once the committee agrees on a redistricting map, they will put a statute before the Missouri Legislature and then before the governor.
Whatever the decision, all the congressmen will remain in their positions until January 2013, said Matt Hesser, demographer for the state of Missouri. In the November 2012 election, Missouri will have only eight congressional races.
The African-American community
Earlier this month, the bureau released separate survey results, including the “Black Population in the United States: 2009.” This data was collected through the Current Population Survey, not the Census 2010.
Covering topics such as marriage status and educational attainment, the survey helps to fill in the gaps that the 10 questions on the Census 2010 forms don’t cover, said Robert Groves, director of the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to the report, 55.9 percent of white people are married, compared to 32.6 percent of black people. (These results represent categories “white alone not Hispanic” and “black alone or in combination.”)
More black females have bachelor’s degrees than black men, 13.7 percent compared to 11.7 percent. More black women also have advanced degrees than black men, 7 percent to 6 percent.
However, 20.6 percent of white females have bachelor’s degrees compared to 21.3 percent of white men. And white men also had more advanced degrees than white women, 12.6 percent to 11.2 percent.
Though black women exceed black men in higher education, they do not make more money. Only 21.4 percent of black women make $50,000 or more, compared to 31.6 percent of black men. However, black men are still tailing behind the 31.9 percent of white women that make $50,000 or more, and far behind the 53.3 percent of white men.
The survey also looked at household structures.
Out of all black homes, 28.2 percent are female households, which are most likely single mothers or grandmothers living with children. That figure compares to 8.6 percent of white homes.
White married-couple households exceed that of black married-couple households, 53.4 percent to 30.1 percent.
And of these homes with white married couples, 30.7 percent of them live on a total income of $100,000 or more. That compares to 13.9 percent of black married-couple homes.
The largest “total income” bracket for black homes overall is $35,000 to $49,999, with 15.6 percent. And for white homes, it is $100,000 or more, with 23.2 percent.
The survey also shows that there are more uninsured black people than white people, 18.9 percent to 10.8 percent.
For all results, visit http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/race/ppl-bc09.html