April 26, 2006
Claritas recently produced a census revealing that the Jackson metro area has taken in some 20,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. This is 5 percent of Jackson's population, which means that on a per capita basis, Jackson has taken in more evacuees than all but a few urban areas. (Hattiesburg-Laurel tops the list with a whopping 10 percent growth in population.)
The census includes two troubling observations about New Orleans. First, the percentage of the population under age 18 has fallen from 28 percent to only 15 percent. Second, while 69 percent of white evacuees had returned home by February, only 33 percent of African Americans had returned. This last may be a consequence of the extraordinary damage to areas occupied by African Americans. In heavily damaged areas, 75 percent of the residents were black. In lightly damaged areas, only 46 percent were black.
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