TDC in the News

Not many people want to talk about it, especially men, but every month women go through their menstrual cycle. During that time, women spend countless dollars on feminine hygiene products.

The 85th Texas Legislature begins next month, and some lawmakers want to look at how those products are taxed.

“I don’t know who crafted the tax code, but I can assure you that there were probably not very many women there to speak up, so I’m speaking up now,” state Sen. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, told the Dallas Morning News.

State Demographer Lloyd Potter breaks down what Texas would look like if it were made up of 100 people.

"I'm always very impressed with the state and what we look like," he says. "There are many very positive things about the state and the characteristics of the population and the changes that we're experiencing, but that also creates a lot of challenges."

It felt surreal to Dania Amezquita, 19, when she cast her first vote.

Nervous, she carefully clicked through her ballot on an early-voting day in November at the City of Pasadena Municipal Court. She voted a straight Democratic ticket.

"I thought, 'I hope I did make a difference,'" the Houston-born Mexican-American said.

Amezquita represents the next wave of Hispanic voters in Texas who could turn the state into a battleground. The demographic is destined to become a political power as its population continues to expand rapidly, making Democrats optimistic that they can build on successes seen this election in counties like Harris – where Hispanics make up an estimated 41 percent of the population.

Every election, Texans are reminded of the Lone Star States' massive and growing population. In 1848, the first election Texas participated in, the state contributed four electoral college votes.

Today, the state offers 38 electoral votes, a 14 percent chunk of the required 270 to win.

California imports have been making headlines in Texas — from big business moves to the sheer number of residents flocking here from the coast.

But a new analysis from the state demographer and the U.S. Census Bureau shows that in many ways, movement within the Lone Star State is more profoundly reshaping the way Texans live — and it may not be for the better.

DALLAS — After shattering the state’s voter registration records this year, Texans last week went on to set new bars for early voting turnout. And nowhere, so far, do people seem to be more fired up about Tuesday’s election than in Collin County.

More than 52.9 percent of registered Collin voters cast ballots during early voting, making it the only county among the state’s 10 largest to exceed the halfway mark in turnout before Election Day. Obviously something has fired up North Texans in this county’s affluent suburbs and rural enclaves.

Are voters in the Republican county passionately protecting their party's long-running stronghold? Or are Democrats finally making visible inroads? Neither party really knows.

HOUSTON — In a county where electoral victory margins at the top of the ticket recently have been remarkably thin, Rosie Barrera and Desmond Bryant are the type of voters Democrats and Republicans both covet.

Barrera, a retiree, says she partakes in Republican primaries but votes “independent of party” during general elections.

“I don’t always agree with the party’s candidate,” Barrera said as she headed into an early voting location on a humid Tuesday afternoon.

From a mostly white southern city devastated by the 1980s oil bust, Houston has transformed into a thriving international metropolis that in 2050 is projected to look more like El Paso, a predominantly Hispanic city on the Mexican border. An El Paso, that is, with Texas-sized shares of white, black and Asian residents.

It's the face of America's future - a stunning turnaround for a one-horse oil town built on a swamp by two New York City real estate promoters. Now the city is the bellwether for the nation as it navigates the challenges of its changing demographics years ahead of the rest of the country.

The voting-age population figure being used by the Texas secretary of state's office to calculate registration and turnout percentages may be off the mark.

If this election has not already made your head hurt, allow us to finish the job.

The Texas secretary of state announced Wednesday that about 78 percent of the state's voting-age population is registered to cast ballots in the Nov. 8 election. It's a simple computation: A record-breaking 15,100,824 people are registered. The population of Texans old enough to vote is 19,307,355. Divide this, multiply by that and you get 78 percent, give or take.

Although incomes have been rising and poverty declining in Texas, there's been less change in the share of households relying on food stamps, new U.S. Census data shows.

In 2015, 12.5 percent of Texas households used the program, down from 13.1 percent in 2014. The drop of about 43,000 households was less significant than the overall drops in individual and household poverty from 2014 to 2015. The disparity underscores that economic recovery has not reached all poor people and that the need for food assistance is not limited to those living in poverty, nutrition advocates and researchers said.

Despite weakness in the key energy sector, the Texas population and economy continues to grow, bringing with it the need to expand the state's energy infrastructure, attendees of a Gulf Coast Power Association workshop learned Monday.

Four of the nation's 10 fastest-growing counties, in terms of raw population, are in Texas, Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter said.

Rapid growth rates in Guadalupe County are triggering commissioners to look into strategic planning that would help pave the way for the county during the next five years.

According to the Office of The State Demographer, the projected population will dramatically increase throughout central Texas, and one of the fastest growing counties is Guadalupe, which is expected to increase anywhere between 75 to 100 percent by 2050.

The cable-stayed span that will replace the Harbor Bridge will be bigger, taller and safer for drivers.

But to hear James Bass tell the story, its appeal won't stop there.

It also will play a crucial role shoring up the entire state's economy.

Speaking in Corpus Christi on Tuesday, Bass, the executive director for the Texas Department of Transportation, said the $930 million bridge replacement project is a top priority for the agency.

That's because the state's massive growth isn't expected to let up; its population now sits at 27.5 million, but is projected to add between 7 million and 17 million people by 2030, according to a report by the Texas State Demographer.

Texas rode the national wave of rising incomes and decreased poverty last year -- a combination economists and demographers found surprising, given turbulence in the state’s energy industry. Experts said the Lone Star state didn’t merely keep pace with the rest of the country; it exceeded national averages in key economic measures included in new Census Bureau data released Thursday.

The San Antonio-New Braunfels metropolitan area saw the biggest decline in its share of residents living in poverty among the nation’s 25 most populated core urban areas last year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released today. While the number and percentage of people in poverty declined for the nation as a whole and for nearly all of those 25 urban areas across the country, the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area’s drop of 2.1 percentage points was the biggest shift downward.

The House Committee on Urban Affairs will hear from experts on the state of the affordable housing market – which strategies are working, and where we need improvement. State Representative Carol Alvarado, a democrat from the Houston area, chairs the committee. Alvarado said they’ll look at how changing demographic trends affect the need for affordable housing, and more specifically, senior housing. A recent report by the state demographer shows that the large Baby Boomer population in Texas is causing the state to age at a rapid rate. That trend is likely to affect policy down the road, as cities work to address housing needs.

A total of 1.7 million, or roughly 13 percent of all undocumented immigrants in the country, live within Texas' borders. In general, Texas is second in the nation for immigrant population size. Between 2000 and 2013 the number of foreign-born immigrants increased in the state by 44.4 percent. In Houston alone, this number was 59 percent, nearly twice the national rate.

Though its elderly population is growing, Texas remains one of the youngest states in the nation, according to a recent report from the state demographer.

“We have more births than deaths, and so that’s the natural increase part of the population change,” says State Demographer Lloyd Potter. “And it’s really healthy in Texas.”

Another factor that keep Texas young – people keep moving here. Potter says many of those newcomers tend to be young professionals and families with children.

A $100 million bet says that thousands of Texans will abandon cars and pick-ups for a needle-nosed bullet train that zips past cattle and ranches to deliver riders from Dallas to Houston in 90 minutes -- a third of the time required to drive.

A decision to slow annexation may be running into the headwinds of growth as newly released U.S. Census figures show Bexar County continuing to grow at double the national growth rate of 4.1 percent.

Between 2010 and 2015 the county grew by 10.7 percent, adding 180,000 people and approaching the 1.9 million mark.

White Americans no longer account for the majority in hundreds of counties across the U.S., a trend transforming America’s social and political landscape as Latinos, Asians and blacks outpace white population growth, according to census figures out Thursday.

In 370 counties across 36 states and the District of Columbia, non-Hispanic whites accounted for less than half the population as of July 2015. That includes 31 additional counties since 2010, such as those encompassing Fort Worth and Austin in Texas; Charlotte, N.C.; Savannah, Ga.; and parts of suburban Atlanta and Sacramento, Calif.

Texas faces a critical challenge. Demographic projections show that unless the state reverses the trend of declining college participation and success rates, Texas will become less educated, less prosperous, less economically competitive and have fewer opportunities and a lower quality of life for its people. The Texas State Demographer projects that if past downward trends in participation in higher education are not corrected, by 2040 the annual loss in household income will exceed $80 billion. This projected economic impact was a reason for the creation in 2000 of Texas' higher education plan. College for Texans is an unprecedented statewide initiative that informs and advises low-income families about the benefits of higher education. VISTA has been heavily involved in developing and implementing programs for area high schools to assist low-incomes to go to college.

Considering the polarization Donald Trump’s promised border wall has created in the presidential campaign thus far, it’s no big surprise that there was apprehension in his visit to San Antonio — the largest majority-Hispanic city in America as of the 2010 Census.

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a longtime Clinton supporter, took to Twitter on June 6, 2016 with his take: "@realDonaldTrump is coming to San Antonio, which is 60% Mexican-AMERICAN & built on respect for many cultures. The last place he'd fit in."

Ni siendo San Antonio una de las ciudades más grandes del país se escapa de la pobreza.

In the last five months, LaNelia Ramette has been to the home of eight Denton County families who had just lost a loved one to suicide. Three of those times, she arrived on the scene before the police tape came down.

Unlike the police officers and medical examiners she encounters on her shifts, Ramette is not a typical first responder. She is a volunteer who appears at the scene of tragedy — with the medical examiner’s permission — to be a voice of compassion in a suicide survivor’s darkest hour.

More than a quarter of Texas’ growth from 2014 to 2015 was concentrated in the state's largest cities, but suburbs continued to grow at the fastest rates, new census figures show. That includes Frisco in Collin County.

New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday showed Texas boasts five of the nation's eleven fastest-growing cities. The Lone Star State is booming. It's time to start planning for our future.

Little has changed since the days when people in the first states decided they'd had it with city life, left their homes and chalked the letters GTT on the door--"Gone to Texas."

Except that now Texas sports some of the nation's biggest cities, and the migrants come from abroad, the West Coast and Midwest more than from the East. The state's cities and suburbs consistently rank among the fastest-growing in the country.

By now, Texans may be getting weary of the constant stream of growth superlatives. The state and its major metro areas routinely top lists of the places attracting companies and new residents, both from abroad and from other states. And census population data released this week doesn’t do much to buck that trend: Houston, for instance, was second only to New York City in terms of the raw number of residents it added from July 2014 to July 2015.

New numbers out today from the U.S. Census Bureau show that five of the fastest growing cities in the nation are here in Texas.

Georgetown tops the list of cities with a population of 50,000 or more. The latest estimates show the Williamson County seat saw a 7.8 percent jump in residents over a recent one-year period.

Texas leaders have been open about their efforts to woo business and investment from the coasts.

And experts have pointed to the influx of major corporate relocations to the Lone Star State from California as evidence that it’s been working.

Now a recently released report from the state demographer charts how the steady stream of new business may be prodding along major demographic shifts, as the state’s population skyrockets — largely the result of record-breaking migration from elsewhere in the United States.

While state lawmakers and some presidential candidates have placed a spotlight on those coming to Texas from other countries, the Lone Star State has become the top destination for migrants of the domestic variety.

This year marks the 35th year of the survey, which, under the leadership of Dr Stephen Klineberg, has made findings that have helped understand Houston’s evolution since 1982. For him, Houston’s demographic transformation is one of the main topics the surveys have helped to track.

The city of Buda grew 77.9 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to the Texas State Data Center, making it Texas’ fastest-growing city with a population of at least 10,000. As of Jan. 1, 2015, the city had a population of 12,979.

The Texas population continues to increase in diversity, and the Office of the Texas State Demographer estimates that by 2030, Hispanics will make up 44 percent of the population, whites 39 percent, blacks 11 percent and other categories 6 percent.

Contrast this with the Texas teaching workforce that is 65 percent white. That’s more diverse than the national average of 82 percent, however, we still have a wide demographic divide between teachers and students. That begs the question: Are teachers – of any racial background – fully prepared to serve such a diverse population of students?

The Houston area added more people last year than any metropolitan region in the country, continuing its exceptional growth of the last decade and a half, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data released Thursday.

Combined, the greater Houston metropolitan area, which includes Houston, The Woodlands and Sugar Land, grew by about 160,000 people between July 2014 and July 2015. Even in a year when the region was rocked by falling oil prices, the population gain was still bigger than the two previous years, when the boom appeared never-ending.

Texas could pick up two, perhaps three, new congressional seats following the 2020 decennial Census if current population growth continues through the decade, political and demographic experts said Thursday.

The San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area was among 16 areas nationwide to gain 50,000 people or more in that one-year period. Looking only at counties, Bexar had the fifth-largest numeric population increase, adding 37,479 people.

EMILY’s List, the national Democratic group that backs "pro-choice" women running for office, endorsed former Hidalgo County Democratic Party Chairwoman Dolly Elizondo in the crowded March 2016 primary field for Texas’ 15th Congressional District.

More than 17 million Texans are eligible to head to the polls and vote in Republican and Democratic primaries, but that doesn’t mean they’ll all turn out tomorrow.

Almost four months have passed since city officials and a private-sector group announced they were funding separate studies to dig into the financial assumptions underpinning San Antonio’s much-debated annexation plan.

Are there no elected 20-somethings under the dome while Texans born in the ‘80s or ‘90s -- a dictionary definition of "millennials" -- comprise a quarter of the state’s voting population?

Short answers: Texas indeed has no legislators under age 30 and, depending on how you define millennials, you could make a case for such Texans comprising close to a quarter of the electorate, though this element needs unpacking.

A campaign video put out by House Speaker Joe Straus, the San Antonio Republican, shows him talking up his re-election hopes and throwing out a claim about huge Texas growth.

Every four years when the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary roll around, the critics and cynics question why such unrepresentative patches of America get to vote first in presidential nominating contests. Why is so much political power, they complain, given to states that are more white and more rural than the rest of the country?

About 430 people attended Wednesday's Economic Outlook Conference, where university, city and county officials and others got a preview of the area's economic climate as the new year begins.

Much of the discussion at the Bryan-College Station Chamber of Commerce's annual conference focused on how falling oil prices will affect the local economy. Jim Gaines, chief economist with Texas A&M's Real Estate Center, said around the time of last year's conference the price of oil had started to drop, but was still around $70 per barrel. Now with prices in the $30s per barrel -- the state budget planned for $65 per barrel -- the story line for the immediate future of Texas has changed, Gaines said.

This article is the first in a series of three articles on prenatal care in Bexar County, Texas, which were produced as a project for the National Health Journalism Fellowship, a program of the Center for Health Journalism at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism.

Texas' economy may be behind population growth in Harris County's African-American community, according to the state demographer.

Of any county in the United States, Harris County had the largest numerical increase in its black population from July 2013 to July 2014, adding 21,000 African-American residents. That data is the most recent available from the U.S. Census Bureau, which highlighted the statistic in a news release last week ahead of February's Black History Month.