Step 1: Summary of My Community
I have lived in Waterbury, Connecticut for [state how long you have lived here]. Moreover, I preside in a nice quiet area with good neighbors off a main street that leads to grocery stores, shops, and other entities. From what I can tell, the area where I live, my community, is a melting pot full of different ethnicities. The most ethnicities I see are typically African Americans, Hispanics, and Caucasians. I am a Hispanic who is married, and I also have two girls that live at home. From what I can tell, the community gets along very well and there is no discrimination nor ill-feelings towards minorities. In fact, there is quite a lot of day to day interaction between all different types of people from different walks of life. It’s quite a comfortable setting and I’m thankful for having the opportunity to participate and be a part of this community.
Step 2: Demographics of My Community
Like I said in my summary above, my community is full of different ethnic backgrounds and this means that there are quite a lot of different racial groups and cultures presiding in Waterbury, Connecticut. According to United States Census Data, the population in 2011 of Waterbury was 110,189. What’s interesting is that this populations shrunk from the 2010 number of 110,366, so there could be what we call population shrinkage. I’d be interested in seeing the updated numbers when they come out and whether they continue this shrinking trend or reversed themselves. Children (under 18) made up about 33% of the population while elders (65+) made up about 13% of the population. Females made up a little over 50% of the population (52%), and this slightly outperformed the average throughout the entire state of Connecticut. In terms of ethnic trends, whites made up only 58.8% of the population, well below the statewide average of 77.6%. I’d like to point out that this means Waterbury is one of the more diverse places in all of Connecticut and truly throughout all of the Northeastern region of the United States. African Americans made up 20% of the population while the state average was 10%, and Hispanics made up 31% of the population, well above the state average of 13.4%. In terms of ethnic trends, these numbers kind of shocked me. I’ve always knew we were ethnically diverse and racially mixed, but I had no clue that the numbers would be so strong that they could be considered an outlier.
Step 3: Analysis of My Community
I also dug up some more statistics that showed my community having a tough time in terms of education. The percentage of high school graduates or higher was 78.7% while the state average was 88.6%. This means that a higher percentage of children are not graduating from high school when compared to the rest of the state. Waterbury should implement more welfare programs in order to keep kids in school. Furthermore, there needs to be more programs that incentivize keeping children in school while also giving the children the ability and tools to stay in school. The federal government recently pulled some programs to supply school lunches to kids, and this will hurt low income earners in Waterbury who need this type of support. I’ve also looked at the median household income in 2015 in Waterbury, and it was 37,877 compared to the average in Connecticut (71,346), which is substantially lower. This tells me that the state needs to do more to encourage firms to invest in this area as well as providing more support to increase investment spending.