Census-2010 Update on “Asian Indians” in Southwest Penna


By Kollengode S Venkataraman

OK. The details of the 2010 US Census containing all kinds of data that can be summarized, parsed, sliced and diced in countless ways are now available online. Extracting the info you want, however, is another matter. You will need a coach — either a virtual one, or a person who can walk you through to navigate the site.

With help from Dr. Amitabha Das (amitabha.das@census.gov) at the US Census Bureau, I learned the basics of extracting data from the 2010-Census database.

In the October-2010 issue, I wrote an article titled “Counting Indian-Americans in Pittsburgh… …” giving the county-by-county numbers of the Indian population in the seven counties around Pittsburgh on the basis of Census-2000 data. The summary of my article was as below.

Allegheny County: 11,800

The remaining 6-counties combined: 2,600

Total: 14,400.

The Census-2000 did not identify Indian Americans as a separate demographic group. However, for Allegheny County it estimated that Indian-Americans are 41.1% of the total Asian population. I estimated the Indian population in the neighboring counties assuming that Indians make up 40% of the Asian population. The Census-2010 data suggest that this assumption was incorrect.

The 2010-Census counts Indian-Americans as a separate group, classifying them as Asian Indian. The table below gives the number for Asian Indians (or Indians) for the seven counties along with the numbers for the entire US and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Several points are in order.

1. The Indian-American population in the US now stands at 2.84 million, accounting for 0.90% of the nation’s population. In Pennsylvania, the Indian population�in the�Census-2010 is�103,000, or 0.81% of the population. In the census in 2000, the Indian population in the state was 88,000, which was 0.713% of Pennsylvania’s popultion of 12 million then.

2. Indian-Americans, by and large, are very urban�– we are City Slickers. For example, 12,600 Indians are in Allegheny County (population 1.223 million with the City of Pittsburgh having over 300,000). But only 2000 Indians live in the seven neighboring counties (with a combined 7-county population of 1.2 million).

3.  In Allegheny County, the Indian population icreased from 11,800 in 2000 t0 12,600 in 2010, which is a respectable 6.7% increase ofer the ten year period.

4. The 2010 Census numbers reveal that the Indian population as a % of the Asian population is not around 40%, the number I used in my earlier calculation, but much lower. While it is close in Allegheny County (37% of all Asians), in the remaining six counties, it is much lower: 12.5% (Indiana County), 25.9% (Westmoreland County), 33.3% (Butler County), and 30.8% (Washington County).

From the 2010 Census data shown in the table�above we can estimate that in the seven counties surrounding Allegheny County, Indian-Americans account for only 25.9% of the Asian population.

The Census-2010 data show that 12,600 Indian-Americans live in Allegheny County alone, and another 2000 of us live in the adjacent seven counties combined.

In these eight-counties, now 14,600 Indian-Americans call this region their home. �

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