Massachusetts’s population grew 1.6% from 2000 to 2007 according to estimates by the United States Census Bureau. Last week the Bureau released estimates for population changes with-in the different races in the 50 states and the United States.

The demographic story for Massachusetts is the familiar one: A slow decline in the number of whites, while the black, Latino and Asian populations are growing rapidly

The table below shows how the different races that make up almost all of Massachusetts population changed from 2000 to 2007.

2007 is the estimate of the population in 2007. 2000 is the counted population in 2000 (the 2000 Census). The next population count will take place in 2010. The “Diff.” column shows the change in absolute numbers from 2000 to 2007. The “% change” column shows the change as a percent. The “% ‘07″ and “% ‘00″ columns show the shares of the overall population for each race.

The Latino population includes all Hispanics. The black population includes all non-Hispanic blacks, including blacks who also belong to another race (multi-racial blacks make up 8.2% of the overall non-Hispanic black population and is faster growing than the single-race black population (at least in Massachusetts and at least according to the Census Bureau’s estimates (the one-race non-Hispanic population grew by less than 10% from 2000 to 2007))). The white population includes all “Not Hispanic, One Race, White” persons and the Asian segment includes “”Not Hispanic, One Race, Asian” persons.

The columns don’t add up to 100% of the state totals since several thousand people fall outside of the four races included in this table.

Had Massachusetts’s white population remained the same in numbers from 2000 to 2007, the state’s population would now be 6,564,861, whites would have made up 80.1% of the population and the state’s population growth would have been 3.4% from 2000 to 2007 instead of 1.6%.

What the estimates don’t reflect are changes within the races. For example, it may be that the state’s African-American population has dwindled or remained stagnant but Haitian and African immigrants have expanded the size of the overall black population. We can’t tell which Asian ethnicities have grown the most. The Hispanic black population is estimated to have grown a lot slower than non-black Hispanic population, perhaps because of more immigration from non-Caribbean Latin America. It’s hard to tell, though, because black Hispanics make up less than 1.5% of the state’s population (the Census Bureau has it that 82% of Hispanics are white, but that’s mostly because of administrative fiat. Almost half of U.S. Hispanics self-reported as Some Other Race in the 2000 Census, but later the Bush Administration simply decided to count members of Some Other Race as Hispanic whites, which is a complete travesty and surely an insult to mestizo and indigenous Hispanics. Since more than 90% of the Some Other Race people are also Hispanic the change didn’t impact the numbers for the white population.).

Update 05/04/2008:

Birth data for Massachusetts suggests rather strongly that the stat’es black population growth is driven entirely by immigration from Africa and non-Hispanic Caribbean nations (eg. Jamaica and Haiti).

The table below shows the 2006 “[b]irth Characteristics by Maternal Race and Hispanic Ethnicity” for Massachusetts (it doesn’t distinguish between uni- and multi-racial mothers, but as I noted above, uni-racial persons are much more frequent than multiracial):

Please note that the race in question is that of the mother and not the child. For example, a child with a black father and a white mother would likely self-report as either black or black and white. So, the the number and share of white babies are actually lower than the table suggests.

47.9% of the black mothers were immigrants. Corresponding share for whites, Asians, and Latinos: 12.3%, 87.5%, and 49.3%, respectively (another 18.5% of Hispanic mothers were born in Puerto Rico).

Hispanics made up 35.8% of all teenage moms.

The table below shows the racial distribution of immigrant mothers who gave birth in Massachusetts in 2006 (mothers born in Puerto Rico are not included):

I’m guessing that the white immigrants are mostly Canadians, Russians, Middle Easterners, Bosnians, Albanians, perhaps some Irish and British, and then a sprinkling of other Europeans.

Since Puerto Ricans are immigrants in all but legal name, it makes sense to include them in the tally of births by immigrant mothers (and also because a non-trivial number of women who claim to be Puerto Ricans probably aren’t):

The next table shows the racial distribution of U.S. born women who gave birth in Massachusetts in 2006.

We can use the updated county population estimates that were released by the United States Census Bureau last week to calculate metropolitan Boston’s estimated population in 2007.

A metropolitan area has an urban core of at 50,000 people and consists of the the surrounding geographic components that are linked to the core through commerce, commuting and other activities. A micropolitan area has an urban core of at least 10,000 people but less than 50,000.

The 800-pound metropolitan gorilla in New England is, of course, Boston, or as the Census Bureau elegantly calls it, using the definition created by the federal Office of Management and Budget, Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH. It consists of Suffolk, Norfolk, Plymouth, Middlesex, and Essex counties in Massachusetts, and Rockingham and Strafford counties in New Hampshire. It is divided into Boston-Quincy, MA (Suffolk, Norfolk, and Plymouth counties), Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA (Middlesex county), Essex county (MA), and Rockingham County-Strafford County (NH).

The estimated population for metropolitan Boston in 2007 is 4,482,857, which is 17,183 - or 0.4% - more than in 2006. The estimated population growth from 2000 to 2007 is 2.1%, or 91,513 people.

The table below shows the population estimates for metropolitan Boston and its main geographic components from 2000 to 2007.

Abbreviations:

B-C-Q, MA-NH = Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH.
B-Q, MA = Boston-Quincy, MA.
C-N-F, MA = Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA.
Essex, MA = Essex County, MA.
R-S, NH = Rockingham County-Strafford County, NH
Cen. = 2000 population count.
% = Percentage change 2000 (census) - 2007.

[3/27/2008 update: Don't take my word for it. Here's the Census Bureau's press release with links to relevant tables.]

(You can of course come up with your definition of what metropolitan Boston is and isn’t. For example, Massachusetts’s legislature has created what it calls Metropolitan Area Planning Council, where the “metropolitan area” covers Boston and 100 surrounding communities (yes, exactly 100 towns and cities). But that’s not the definition used here).

The United States Census Bureau released July 1, 2007, population estimates for counties this morning. Suffolk County, home of Boston, had an estimated population of 713,049, up from 710,139 in 2006, and almost 24,000 more people than the Census counted in the county in 2000. These are pretty dramatic upwards revisions of previous population estimates for Suffolk county. Last year’s estimate for the 2006 population in Suffolk was 687,610 people.

The table below shows the Census Bureau’s population estimates for Suffolk County, Massachusetts, from 2007 through 2006. The Old estimate (”Orig. est.”) column shows the estimates from last year’s data release, while the current estimate (”Curr. est.”) column shows the revised etimates released in 2007. The “Diff.” column shows the difference between original and current estimate, not year-by-year growth in estimated population.

What I call original estimates in the table above are in fact revisions of an earlier set of estimates. In the table below you can can see all three sets of population estimates for Suffolk county side-by-side:

What the table above tells you is that at this time two years ago the Census Bureau thought Suffolk had about 53,000 fewer residents in 2005 than what it now estimates the county had that year.

Since Suffolk had about 100,000 more residents than the city of Boston did in 2000, and since the Bureau’s various population estimates for the county and the city has never been more than about 115,000 people apart, I believe the 2007 population estimate for Boston will top 600,000. The current estimate for Boston’s 2006 population was 590,763, but was changed to 595,698 in November last year, after Boston challenged the estimate (yes, it really was last year, as I wrote initially).

According to the same sources (the 2000 Census and subsequent population estimates) Massachusetts’s population has grown from 6,349,097 in 2000 to 6,449,755 in 2007, suggesting that almost a quarter of the state’s population growth took place in Suffolk County. That seems somewhat hard to believe, but we’ll see what can be gleaned from coming population estimates and American Community Survey updates.

Barnstable and Berkshire counties have lost population since 2000, while Worcester county’s has grown to 781,352 from 750,963.

Tatte opened its very first location Tatte Patisserie & Cafe, last Wednesday at 1003 Beacon Street in Brookline (in the place that used to be French Savoy Bakery).

I stopped by today but sadly didn’t have time to linger. I did, however, try a flourless pecan brownie and a couple of pieces of cinnamon rose cake. I liked both. A lot, actually. Tatte is a good addition to St. Mary’s T-stop sort-of-square.

Below is a photo of Tatte that was taken a couple of weeks ago. The store was supposed to open on Monday the 25, but they beat that deadline by five days. Not bad.

Tatte’s website

Several inches of beautiful light snow fell over eastern Massachusetts yesterday. Behold and enjoy a few photos of the sudden winter wonderland:

At about 6:40 or so this evening we drove by a number of Boston and Brookline emergency vehicles on westbound Beacon Street at the St. Mary’s T-stop. I got the impression that a cab had hit a pedestrian.

The Daily Free Press reports that UBurger is going to open a restaurant in Boston University’s West Campus, near Agganis Arena. Writes the Press:

The original UBurger, which opened about a year and a half ago, is located in Kenmore Square and is a popular spot for many Boston University students, with more than 500 daily orders, Kouvlis said.

Kouvlis and Kesaris, two college buddies, said they had not planned to open another restaurant for another year, but business had grown too big for just the Kenmore Square location.

“We’ve outgrown this place,” Kesaris said of the current restaurant.

…

“We expect [the new location] to be busier than the [Kenmore location] because West Campus has four to five times the number of students than East Campus and also it’s closer to a residential area,” Kesaris said.

That’s great. UBurger is an excellent hamburger place well-deserving of its success. While I can’t imagine West Campus getting much boost from Boston Red Sox games, there is a fair amount of crowd-drawing concerts, ice hockey games and other events at Agganis that should increase sales at UBurger’s new location.

After a hectic Saturday at the Boston Wine Expo it was nice to drive to Kenmore Square to spend a relaxing afternoon in our old neighborhood. Just as we parked a terrific snowfall – I think one could call it a squall – broke out. The photograph below doesn’t really do it justice but hints at the intensity of the spectacular but sadly short lived weather. After a few minutes it looked and felt like an early spring day rather than what it should be, namely biting winter.

While the snow was still twirling and racing through the air we headed to Z Square Café, the new restaurant at the west end of Kenmore Square, at 580 Commonwealth Avenue, more or less across the street from the HoJo turned Boston University dorm.

Z Square’s Kenmore Square location opened less than a month ago. We paid our first visit to the restaurant two weeks go, when we were in the area to take part in Boston University’s Winter Fest for BU grads (the missus is a proud Terrier).

Z Square in K Square offers a half-dozen seating styles, including bar seating, booths, and plush lounge chairs. That’s a big plus as your seating preferences may vary depending on the size and composition of your party as well as the purpose of the outing. Not that you should take for granted that the lounge chairs will be available.

Large windows and a curved facade give the restaurant a spacious and open feel.

The restrooms (one for the gents, one for the ladies) have high-speed cool-air hand driers that are much better at drying hands than the traditional energy-demanding hot-air hand driers. Green, clean and efficient. Not a bad combination.

Z Square has an unusual combination of café and table service. You order the food at the counter, cafe style, but the food is brought to you at the table. Unusual as that may be, it is a good compromise between efficiency and convenience. The downside, at least until the operational quirks have been worked out and more customers have become accustomed to the menu and ordering process, is that the order taking can be a bit slow, although far from hopelessly slow.

The restaurant calls it cuisine “creative American home cooking.” I don’t know enough about creative, American, or home cooking to judge that statement, but I do know I like the food they put on the plates.

I can vouch for their omelet, scrambled eggs, and wonderfully fluffy but filling waffles. Consider ordering a side of roasted potatoes if they aren’t included with your main order because they are good.

What we haven’t done yet is go to Z Square for dinner, when the menu is a bit different and includes wine and beer along with sturdy sounding entrees like flank steak and lamb kabob. The wine list includes 15 labels (six red, six white and three sparkling). Z Square doesn’t seem to carry bottled Bud Light, but I imagine nobody but me sees that as a notable short coming.

Now, as I mentioned above, the restaurant needs to improve a bit in execution (as I told a poor captive audience of one on Saturday, execution is the hardest part of any business). For some reason our order today didn’t make it from the cash register to the kitchen, which is a rather critical point in the production chain. However, an attentive member of the staff noticed that that we had not been served food for some time and promptly made sure that the appropriate person followed up. I’d say it was a sign of solid professionalism for the first staff member to catch the error because while we had been sitting at the table unexpectedly long without being served, we had not been sitting there unreasonably long. After the mistake had been detected the food was brought to us expeditiously and amends were made and then some. I think it’s safe to say that Z Square Kenmore Square has both staff and management who care about your experience there.

All in all, if you have occasion to eat in Kenmore Square put Z Square on your short list and make it your first choice if you go for breakfast or brunch.

Boston Business Journal brings you Z Square in Kenmore Square by the numbers (which is always deeply appreciated).

Update February 23:

We had brunch at Z Square in Kenmore Square again this morning (okay, late morning, one could say noon) and execution seems to have steadily improved. I had a Z Square breakfast (two eggs, roasted potatoes, ham and toast) which filled me up nicely even though I hadn’t had any breakfast and had spent an hour shoveling snow. My wife had an egg panini that she quickly declared the best value in the place.

Natick’s clearly Swede-hating population has nixed Red Snakes as replacement for the old Indian-centric Redmen. The town’s high school teams will reportedly be known as the Hawks going forward. The Hawks. Very original, Natick. Why not Eagles or Wildcats while you were at it? It’s unfortunate that such narrow minded bigotry is allowed to rear its ugly head like that. Heck, if they had at least gone with Collectors.

Sometimes it’s fun to watch a game with really few preconceived notions or prior knowledge about it. The wife and I went to last night’s game between Boston University Terriers and University of New Hampshire Wildcats at Agganis Arena on Commonwealth Avenue. While I root for the Terriers in whatever sport they play in (and also in football, which they don’t play, unfortunately) I can’t say I follow them much, so I didn’t know what to expect.

I certainly didn’t expect the Terriers to be clearly outdone in three rather critical areas: Skating, puck handling, and positioning. It all added up to a 5-3 victory for UNH.

The first period was the worst and the Terriers would probably have fallen behind by more than one goal had not one of the Wildcats punched a Terrier in the face, earning himself a disqualification and his team five minutes of shorthanded play. The Terriers failed to score but the power play at least allowed them to stay even for a while (at least on the ice, they were already behind on the scoreboard).

BU had a hard time getting shots off. They threw the puck around instead of at the goal and they generally failed to create good shot opportunities. Their power-play box struck me as being spaced out too much, which allowed the Wildcats to regroup whenever the BU players passed the puck along the blue line. By contrast, the Wildcats power-play box was tighter which allowed them to shuffle the puck faster and get off more and better shots (the box score has it that BU outshot UNH 14-7 in the first period but that just goes to show how nebulous shot statistics are in ice hockey).

The Terriers also lacked in puck handling compared to the Wildcats. Too many opportunities were squandered - or afforded UNH - by Terriers whiffing on the puck. What I didn’t know going into the game is that UNH is ranked seventh in the nation while BU has a losing record.

The second period was quite entertaining. First the Terriers tied the game (Nick Bonino), then the Wildcats took the lead gain and later extended it to 3-1 on a power-play goal. But the Terriers struck, first by converting a power-play situation (Kev Shattenkirk) and then by tying the game 40 seconds later (Jason Lawrence).

Sadly, the Wildcats reasserted their superiority in the final period and eventually won 5-3. I thought the Terriers, while outplayed, at least played hard. My wife disagreed. BU head coach Jack Parker agreed with my wife, according to the The Boston Globe’s game report:

“We acted like we were disinterested in the third period,” said Parker, whose squad is a woeful 2-6-1 at home. “Before we went out for the third period, there was absolutely no emotion, you’d think we’d be all jacked up. It’s almost as if they were waiting to lose. Sad display by my team tonight. Great display by UNH. Without question, the best team won because of effort.”

The best team won, no doubt, but I’m not so sure that effort alone was the difference.

Depressing fact:

With the win, UNH completes its first ever regular-season sweep of the Terriers in Hockey East play.

On a positive note, both BU student sections produced a lot of noise throughout the game and even the general admissions sections were pretty good for being general admission. UNH had an impressive contingent of fans in tow. 6,024 spectators in all.

Below are some pictures from the game:

From left to right: BU Terriers Nick Bonino, Luke Popko, Colin Wilson, and John McCarthy during warm ups.

Brian McGuirk.

McCarthy in a third period face off.

Wilson wins a third period face-off for the Terriers.

Ryan Weston, McCarthy, and McGuirk chasing a play.

UNH stops a third-period attack.

UNH stops another third-period attack.

BU students dressed as a patriotic hot dog and, I think, Jesus in one of the student sections.

BU’s mascot Rhett fools around during a promotion in the second intermission.

Student section greets players entering the ice.

A group of BU student-athletes who were absolutely determined not to face our way. They were honored for having excelled in the field of athletic excellence.