Demographics

The fact that you can buy a Mickey Mouse CD player or a Hello Kitty! boom box may not seem culturally compelling, but in fact each is a potent sign of the times in pop music. More than ever, grade-school students constitute a coveted demographic for music, and their tastes have, for better or worse, tilted pop culture in dramatic ways over the last decade.

Heartland communities with jobs to offer are magnets for Latinos, who account for about half the nation's population growth, according to a new study released today. Latinos in the U.S. -- recent immigrants and people born here -- are moving beyond traditional ports of entry in large numbers, boosting the populations of states such as North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Indiana, the study by the Brookings Institution shows.

James Hammonds looked stoic as he surveyed Selma's Civil War battlefield, but he could not resist a sigh: The trenches' gray planks had buckled, leaving gaps in the city's defenses. Hammonds, who 19 years ago came up with the idea of reenacting Selma's place in Civil War history, now fears that his town is losing another battle. Almost 141 years after a ragtag Confederate army struggled to defend Selma against Union forces, historical reenactors have canceled this year's Battle of Selma.

In more ways than one, a recent predawn roll call at the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Street Division was emblematic of the profound changes that the LAPD has undergone in recent years. As two dozen officers were briefed on crime in their area, they were aided by computerized maps showing hot spots in the division's neighborhoods, maps produced daily by a department far more sophisticated technologically than it was a decade ago.

Most of this city is still a river of rubble, with basic services barely functioning and its population slashed in half. But when voters go to the polls Saturday to cast their ballots for mayor, an underlying factor influencing their choice for the person who will help them retreat or return, rebuild or raze, is another R-word. "It's about race," said Elliott Stonecipher, an independent pollster based in Shreveport, La.

The Inland Empire, fed by migrants from coastal California, is the fastest-growing urban area in the United States, according to a survey released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. Since 2000, there has also been a significant outflow of people from places long associated with the ideal of California living -- Los Angeles and the Bay Area -- to more affordable regions such as the Inland Empire.

Latino population growth accounted for nearly half of the nation's population increase of 2.8 million from July 2004 to July 2005, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released today. The numbers reaffirm Latinos as the country's largest minority group, at 42.7 million, and as the fastest-growing segment of the population, with a 3.3% growth rate. The Census Bureau data show that Latino population growth is driven more by births than by immigration. The new figures put the total U.S.

Young adults between the ages of 19 and 29 are the largest and fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population lacking health insurance, according to a report released Wednesday. Young adults comprised 40% of the 6 million people who joined the ranks of the uninsured from 2000 to 2004, the last year for which data are available, according to Sara Collins, senior program officer at the Commonwealth Fund, which issued the report.

In the four months following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the population of the New Orleans metropolitan area became substantially whiter, older and less poor, and it shrank to less than half its size, according to statistics released today by the Census Bureau. The figures were drawn from estimates of the hurricane-affected areas along the Gulf Coast as of Jan. 1, and cover 117 counties initially designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for individual or public assistance.

Public school enrollment is dropping fast in some of the most notoriously crowded neighborhoods of Los Angeles as soaring rents and property values displace low-income, mostly immigrant families. "It's getting too expensive to live here. I hear that from parents all the time," clerk Mina Rocha said recently from her post at the front counter of Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in Pico-Union, in the crook of the 10 and 110 freeways.