Brooklyn Demographics

Historic New York City boroughs (in millions). Colors: Brooklyn , Bronx , Manhattan , Queens , Staten Island .

Brooklyn isthe largest of the five boroughs of New York City with a population of 2,504,700 (as of April 1, 2010 ). With a land area of ​​182.9 km², this corresponds to a population density of 13,694 inhabitants per km². The annual population growth is 0.16 percent (average 2000–2010).

Population development

The area of ​​what is now Brooklyn saw rapid population growth in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The towns in Kings County had a combined population of about 6,000 at the beginning of the 19th century. When Brooklyn was incorporated into New York after a referendum in 1898, it already had more than a million inhabitants. 30 years later, the population reached 2.5 million. As a result, growth weakened significantly until the population in 1950 reached its historic high of 2.74 million. The subsequent population decline amounted to almost a fifth by 1980. Since then, the number of inhabitants has increased slightly again, so that today it has almost reached the level of 1930. Brooklyn overtook Manhattan in terms of population in the mid-1920s and has since been the largest of New York's five boroughs.

Population groups and origins

Location Brooklyn (yellow) in New York City (the airports La Guardia in the north and J. F. Kennedy in the south are colored blue).

Brooklyn is home to a wide variety of populations, reflecting all waves of immigration to the United States . The first settlers were Dutch and British , later Germans and Italians immigrated . As part of the Great Migration , many former black slaves from the southern states and Puerto Ricans moved to Brooklyn increasingly from the middle of the 20th century. In the past few decades, however, most of the migrants have come from other Caribbean countries as well as from Asia and Eastern Europe . Due to the continuing high level of immigration, 40.1 percent of all residents were born outside the United States today (ACS 2009). As is usually the case in the United States, the individual population groups or groups of origin also live largely spatially separated in their own neighborhoods in Brooklyn. While southern and western Brooklyn is dominated by whites, the north and east are mostly African-American and Hispanic .

With a share of 42.8 percent, whites are the largest population group, of which non-Hispanic whites make up 35.7 percent (Census 2010). This makes Brooklyn a majority-minority county , which means that non-Hispanic whites make up less than half of the county's population. The most common European groups of origin are Italians with 157,000 people (6.1 percent of the population), 101,000 Russians (3.9 percent), 88,800 Irish (3.5 percent), 71,100 Poles (2.8 percent), 53,200 Germans (2, 1 percent), 36,200 British , 29,100 Hungarians , 24,500 Ukrainians , 17,300 French , 14,500 Greeks , 11,200 Romanians and 11,100 Scots as well as 5,900 Austrians and 2,500 Swiss . Furthermore, 43,600 Arabs (including many Egyptians and Syrians ) and 14,600 Israelis live in Brooklyn , who are also counted among the whites (ACS 2009).

The residential areas of Americans of European descent are concentrated in the southern and western districts of Brooklyn. Community District 15 has the highest proportion of non-Hispanic whites with 75.5 percent, and Community District 16 has the lowest with 0.7 percent ( Census 2000 ). Italian-Americans make up the majority in the Bensonhurst , Gravesend and Bay Ridge neighborhoods . In contrast, Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay are dominated by Russian-Americans, Gerritsen Beach and Marine Park by Irish-Americans and Greenpoint and Greenwood Heights by Polish-Americans. Regardless of national origin, over 40 percent of non-Hispanic whites belong to the Jewish faith . Jews make up the majority of the population in Borough Park and Midwood .

34.3 percent of the population are black and African American, including 31.9 percent non-Hispanic blacks (Census 2010). According to groups of origin, 12.6 percent of the population are West Indians , including 89,400 Jamaicans (3.5 percent), 71,600 Haitians (2.8 percent), 50,800 Trinidadian and Tobago people and 17,300 Barbadians . Brooklyn also has 60,100 immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa (ACS 2009). Community District 17 has the highest proportion of blacks with 88.4 percent, and Community District 11 has the lowest with 0.4 percent ( Census 2000 ). The traditional cultural center of Afro-Americans in Brooklyn is the Bedford-Stuyvesant district , where they have made up the majority of the population since the 1930s following the construction of the A-Line of the subway connection between Harlem and Bedford. Other predominantly African American neighborhoods in north and east Brooklyn, all around Bedford-Stuyvesant, include Brownsville , Canarsie , Crown Heights , East Flatbush , Prospect Lefferts-Gardens , East New York and Fort Greene . Blacks make up around 940,000 inhabitants or 82 percent of the population in these districts. This makes it the largest predominantly African American settlement area in the United States. That said, blacks make up a significant proportion of public housing residents across Brooklyn.

19.8 percent of Brooklyn's residents are Hispanics or Latinos (Census 2010). According to skin color, it is 9.7 percent white, 1.6 percent black, 0.7 percent have assigned to another and the remaining 7.6 percent to none of the specified races . With 190,000 people (7.4 percent of the population), Puerto Ricans are the largest and traditionally most important ethnic group among Hispanics. The Latinos also include the 95,000 Dominicans living in Brooklyn , 91,200 Mexicans , 28,900 Ecuadorians , 12,900 Colombians , 12,700 Panamanians and 12,500 Salvadorians as well as 7,000 Spaniards, among others (ACS 2009). The neighborhoods that are now predominantly Hispanic are in the east and northeast of Brooklyn and were previously Afro-American, including Bushwick , East Williamsburg and Cypress Hills . There are also many Latinos living in Sunset Park in southern Brooklyn. Community District 4 has the highest proportion of Hispanics with 67.2 percent, and Community District 15 has the lowest with 6.4 percent ( Census 2000 ).

Asians are the fastest growing population group, which now makes up 10.5 percent of the population of Brooklyn (Census 2010). Among them, the Chinese are by far the largest group with 163,000 people (6.4 percent), furthermore 19,900 Indians , 15,800 Pakistanis , 9,700 Filipinos , 7,000 Koreans , 7,000 Bangladeshis , 5,700 Vietnamese and 4,700 Japanese (ACS 2009). Community District 11 has the highest proportion of Asians (including Pacific islanders) with 23.0 percent, and Community District 16 has the lowest with 0.6 percent ( Census 2000 ). A particularly large number of Asians live in southern Brooklyn, in districts such as Sunset Park and Homecrest .

In the 20th century, Brooklyn saw significant changes in the composition of the population. While the city district was still almost exclusively inhabited by whites at the beginning of the century (1910: 99 percent), their proportion fell to 41 percent by the year 2000 (including white Hispanics). The proportion of blacks, on the other hand, rose from 1 percent (1910) to 38 percent (1990). While the west and south of the borough is mainly inhabited by whites to this day, an almost complete exchange of the resident population took place in the east and north due to the immigration of blacks and later also Hispanics. The neighborhoods around Bedford-Stuyvesant such as Brownsville, Canarsie and East New York were previously shaped by Italians and Jews until they switched to an Afro-American and Puerto Rican majority of the population. These migratory movements mainly occurred in the 1950s to 1970s, when social problems increased with black and Hispanic immigration and a total of nearly 500,000 mostly white residents left Brooklyn. Most moved to Queens , Staten Island, or counties of Long Island and New Jersey .

The following tables present the data on the population of Brooklyn in detail. All data are the results of surveys by the United States Census Bureau .

languages

Brooklyn has a high level of linguistic diversity. English is the first language for a good half of the population (54.8 percent). The second most important language is Spanish , which 16.9 percent use at home. The remaining 28.3 percent are spread across numerous other languages, including 6.0 percent Chinese and 5.6 percent Russian .

Overall, 75.8 percent of Brooklyn residents say they use English as a first or second language. Accordingly, the proportion of people who do not speak English very well, at 24.2 percent, is well above the American average (8.6 percent). The distribution of English skills is also very different among the population groups. Values ​​of over 90 percent for native English speakers and over 98 percent for all people who speak English very well are only achieved by groups of origin from English-speaking countries such as the English, Irish, Jamaicans and Guyanese. Afro-Americans, Germans and Italians also have relatively good knowledge of English. English is the least widely spoken by Chinese, Ecuadorians, Dominicans, and Mexicans. In these groups, the proportion of native speakers is less than 10 percent and, including bilinguals, less than 50 percent.

Religions

The largest denominational group in Brooklyn is the Roman Catholic Church with a population of 37 percent. Another 15 percent of the population are Jews and 9 percent Protestants of various directions. 37 percent of those questioned are not denominational or do not want to assign themselves to any of the religions recorded.

Economic situation and education

Brooklyn is one of the structurally weaker counties in the United States. The per capita income is $ 23,370 , 14 percent below the national average and even 24 percent below the average for New York City. In addition, prosperity is very unevenly distributed among the various population groups. Whites are by far the richest group on average. The incomes of blacks and Asians are mostly below the population average, while Hispanics are still significantly poorer. By origin, the English are the wealthiest and the Mexicans the poorest, with the former earning on average almost five times more than the latter. All non-European groups of origin have incomes below the population average.

The unemployment rate is 7.9 percent, similar to the United States and New York City. The lowest unemployment is found among Mexicans (4.7 percent), the highest among blacks (10.4 percent) and Puerto Ricans (11.6 percent). The proportion of people living below the poverty line in Brooklyn, at 21.5 percent, is far higher than the American average (13.6 percent). Hungarians are most often affected by poverty (44.7 percent), the least likely to be Irish (8.6 percent) and English (9.7 percent).

The level of education in Brooklyn is about the American average as measured by school leaving certificates. Of those aged 25 and over, 77.5 percent have a high school degree (USA: 84.9 percent) and 28.7 percent have a bachelor's degree (USA: 27.8 percent). Whites generally have the best and Hispanics the worst. Blacks have a solid high school education on average, but are less likely to have a bachelor's degree. Asians are less likely to have high school degrees than average, but the higher bachelor's degrees are close to the population average. Of the statistically recorded groups of origin, the English and German have the best education in terms of both high school and bachelor's degrees, while Mexicans have the worst education. The English are on average eight times more likely to have a bachelor's degree than Mexicans.

See also

• List of Brooklyn celebrities

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} American Fact Finder: 2010 Census , accessed April 23, 2011.
2. ^ Evarts B. Greene, Virginia D. Harrington: American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 . New York 1932. Quoted in: Ira Rosenwaike: Population History of New York City . Syracuse University Press, Syracuse NY 1972, ISBN 0-8156-2155-8 , pp. 8 .
3. ↑ New York State Department of Economic Development ( Memento of the original from August 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF)  
4. ^ Population Finder. US Census Bureau, accessed October 31, 2010.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} American Community Survey , representative study by the US Census Bureau, accessed October 26, 2010.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Data Sets 2000 Census , accessed on November 19, 2009.
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Data Sets 1990 Census , accessed on November 19, 2009.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Historical Census Statistics On Population Totals , accessed November 19, 2009.
9. ^ Association of Religion Data Archives , accessed October 26, 2010.