Census Bureau, Race EMBARGOED UNTIL: 12:01 A.M. EST, FEBRUARY 24, 1999 (WEDNESDAY) Public Information Office CB99-37 301-457-3030/301-457-3670 (fax) 301-457-1037 (TDD) e-mail: pio@census.gov Kymberly DeBarros/ Claudette Bennett 301-457-2402 Two-Thirds of African American Families Have Children, Census Bureau Reports Two out of three African American families included children under age 18 in 1998, in contrast to less than one-half of non-Hispanic White families, according to the Commerce Department's Census Bureau. The tabulations on African Americans released today on the Internet include data on such characteristics as population distribution, marital status, educational attainment, income, earnings and poverty. Some highlights: - Nearly 6 in 10 African Americans lived in the South in 1998. - Three-fourths of African Americans age 25 and over had at least a high school education and 15 percent had completed at least a bachelor's degree. - Approximately 55 percent of all African American married-couple families had two earners in 1997, compared with 51 percent of comparable non-Hispanic White families. - The earnings of African American women who had completed high school and worked full time, year-round in 1997 was 78 percent of what their male counterparts earned (median earnings of $19,990 and $25,790, respectively). These findings are from a supplement to the March 1998 Current Population Survey. As in all surveys, the data are subject to sampling variability and other sources of error. Later this year, the Census Bureau will release, The Black Population in the United States: March 1998, a full analytical report on the nation's African American population, using data collected in the March 1998 Current Population Survey. -X- The U.S. Census Bureau, pre-eminent collector and disseminator of timely, relevant and quality data about the people and the economy of the United States, conducts a population and housing census every 10 years, an economic census every five years and more than 100 demographic and economic surveys every year, all of them evolving from the first census in 1790.
