Community Corner

Map: What Part of Town Has the Most Veterans?

Newscruncher is an ongoing series that breaks down the characteristics of your town. The map below shows the percentage of the civilian population 18 years and older who are veterans of the U.S. Military by Census tract across your neighborhood.

Newscruncher is a daily series that breaks down the characteristics of your town by the numbers. You can see more posts by clicking the Newscruncher link above the headline or by checking out our weekend roundups. If you see any technical issues with this map, or if you'd like to suggest ideas for future Newscruncher articles, please email data@patch.com.

This map shows the percentage of the civilian population across your neighborhood who are veterans of the U.S. Military. 

Veterans can be disproportionately affected by a federal government shutdown: Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki has said that the Veterans Affairs Department (VA) has furloughed more than 7,800 employees, half of whom are vets. And as a result of the shutdown, the number of backlogged disability claims to the VA has increasing by 2,000 since October 1.

Shinseki has testified that if the shutdown doesn't end soon, the VA can't ensure that checks will go out on November 1 for over 5 million veteran beneficiaries.

The data are from the United States Census Bureau's 2011 American Community Survey. (Note: Census.gov was "unavailable" at the time this article was published thanks to the federal government shutdown.)  These values are an estimate for 2011 taking into account 60 months of collected data. You can learn more about the survey here.

Using your cursor, you can hover over any census tract – the geographic region defined by the U.S. Census – and see the percentage of civilian veterans 18 years and older in the box in the upper right hand corner of the map.     

Do you think the government shutdown is affecting veterans in town? Tell us in a comment or a blog post.


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