A statistical profile of Ukrainians in the Chicago Metropolitan Area
by Oleh Wolowyna
INTRODUCTION
On April 15, the United States will conduct its next Population and Housing Census. This event, which happens once every 10 years, has special importance for Ukrainians in the United States. Census data provide the only viable data source for estimating the number of Ukrainians in the United States; a survey trying to capture a representative sample of all Ukrainians in the United States would be prohibitively costly. The decennial census provides detailed information about geographic distribution, demographic and socio-economic characteristics, as well as information about housing characteristics.
We have been fortunate that in the 1980 and 1990 censuses the same two key questions have been asked: a) ancestry; b) language spoken at home.
The ancestry question (What is your ancestry?) allows respondents to identify themselves as being of Ukrainian ancestry; persons of mixed ancestry can declare two different ancestries.
The language question (What is the language usually spoken at home?) provides a reasonable measure of the degree of language assimilation.
These questions have been used to estimate the total number of Ukrainians in the United States, and to measure their degree of assimilation in terms of language and ancestry, i.e., linguistic assimilation and assimilation due to intermarriage. Using a sample of full census records, we have been able to make detailed quantitative analyses of Ukrainians in the United States both for 1980 and 1990, and measure changes and trends during this decade in different processes: migration, language assimilation, socio-economic mobility, etc. Many of these results have been published in The Ukrainian Weekly.
The same questions will be asked in the 2000 census. This will provide us with an opportunity to update our knowledge about the status of Ukrainians in the United States. It will also provide us with a unique opportunity to answer many questions about the so-called "Fourth Wave," i.e., recent Ukrainian immigrants from Ukraine and from other countries of the former Soviet Union.
As Ukrainians are a relatively small group in the U.S. population (about 0.3 percent), the published tabulations contain little information about them. Using a sample of full census records allows us to make very detailed analyses and produce an almost unlimited number of tabulations with all the variables asked in the census form. In our previous analyses we have barely scratched the surface of all the issues one can address with this data. Here we tap into two new dimensions: profile of Ukrainians in large metropolitan areas, and economic and housing characteristics. We have chosen the Chicago Metropolitan Area as an example; similar analyses can be made for other cities with relatively large numbers of Ukrainians.
Some caveats are in order about the limitations of the data. First, we only have information about persons who declared that Ukrainian was their first or second ancestry; persons who are of Ukrainian ancestry but did not state this in their census form are not counted. Second, ancestry and language are asked in the so called "long form" - which was received on the average by one of every five households - thus, many persons did not have the chance to report their ancestry and language spoken at home. Third, the data used for this analysis are a 5 percent sample of the total population. This means that we are working with a sample of about 5 percent of the total number of Ukrainians in the United States. At the national level the actual number of cases in this sample provides relatively good estimates; at the Metropolitan Area (MA) level the number of cases is often small, and some of the results for MAs may have significant variations due to sampling errors.
Finally, the U.S. Bureau of the Census works with several definitions of MA, and these definitions change from census to census. The definitions used in this article are different from the ones used in our analysis of the 1980 census data, and figures we published for the 1980 census are not comparable with the ones published here. (The definitions of the MAs discussed here are provided in a note at the end of the article.)
This article is composed of two parts. In the first part we provide a general overview of the main demographic, social and cultural characteristics of Ukrainians in the Chicago Metropolitan Area. In the second part we discuss selected economic and housing characteristics of Ukrainian households in Chicago. The intent of the article is to illustrate what can be done with census data at the regional level. A number of topics are presented, but none is analyzed in depth; this would require a separate article for each topic. We want to illustrate the potential of census data for a more objective analysis of the community's status and problems, and to motivate community leaders to start thinking about a more intensive use of the year 2000 census data (the census date is April 1, 2000).
Oleh Wolowyna is owner and president of the counsulting firm Informed Decisions, Inc., in Chapel Hill, N.C. He has worked as a consultant in the international development field (population and health) for more than 20 years. He has also done extensive demographic and sociological analysis of Ukrainians in the United States and Canada, as well as demographic analysis of the situation in Ukraine.
INTRODUCTION
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 9, 2000, No. 2, Vol. LXVIII
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