Insights Archives

Most people are aware of the U.S. Census Bureau's Decennial Census that every American household fills out once a decade, but fewer are aware that the Census Bureau puts out Population Estimates every year, using birth, death, and migration rates to estimate the population of the United States by age, sex, race, and ethnicity at all geography levels. It turns out a lot can happen between one census and the next!

Todd Graham, Metropolitan Council's principal demographer, explains the new MSA and shares his view of the recent expansion of the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington MSA from 13 counties to 16 counties.

The Saint Paul Foundation and Minnesota Compass teamed up to create unique East Metro data profiles on the Minnesota Compass website. Claire Chang, associate vice president of grants and program for The Saint Paul Foundation, talks with Compass about the inspiration for the profiles, how they can be used, and their role in the $1 million Forever Saint Paul Challenge.

Recently, I was fortunate to attend the Minnesota Compass annual meeting. It was great to celebrate this organization's work in advancing our understanding of Minnesota now and in the future, and to reflect on what these statistics mean for our state. The most sobering findings won't surprise anyone who's heard about Minnesota's large racial achievement gaps.

The Minnesota Compass team, along with Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner Brenda Cassilius and Boston Scientific's Director of Community Relations Marilee Grant, recently convened an Education Advisory Group to provide insight on key measures featured in our Education topic area.

Minnesota Compass won a national award – our community and state win a much bigger reward! The Compass project staff at Wilder Research were proud to accept an "Impact Award" at the Annual Community Indicators Conference in Washington D.C. last month. The award honored the project for its pace-setting quality providing useful information that communities throughout our state can use to maintain and improve their quality of life.

We know that a lot of people like to have data about the state as a whole, but also want to be able to say what is going on in their own area. For that reason, we provide data for all 87 of Minnesota's counties, and the 55 cities with populations over 20,000. You can access this data in two ways: by region and by topic area.

Before the recent election, we heard a great deal about conditions in our communities, our state, and our nation, and the conversation continues. So, we thought we would share what we know, from data which have recently emerged on community conditions. Because, of course: "We are all entitled to our own opinions; but we are not entitled to our own facts."

Compass talked with Randi Roth, Executive Director of the Otto Bremer Foundation since 2008, about community involvement and the Foundation's role in promoting it.

Times are tough. We know that. Those of us who manage organizations serving the community and who have worked through demanding times before also recognize that, with creativity and hard work, we can persevere; we can succeed in continuing to meet the needs of the community.