Census 2010: More North Canton Seniors Live Alone; Single Moms on Rise

The U.S. Census Bureau released demographic data for individual communities across Ohio today, including North Canton.

To help give you a better idea of what’s happened in your city in the past 10 years, we’ve compared some 2000 data to the new 2010 Census data, which you can find in the PDFs section of this update.

We already had , which included information about population and racial breakdowns.

Here’s some new information we found:

1. Single moms are on the rise in North Canton

Census numbers from 2000 told us 4.2 percent of households in North Canton were mothers living with their children 18 years old and younger with no husband. That’s jumped to 4.9 percent of the households in the city.

Although the 2000 Census didn’t say what percentage of households had single fathers with children 18 and younger, it does say that in 2010, that number is 1.7 percent.*

2. North Canton is becoming more diverse

In 2000, whites made up 96.9 percent of the population, but now they make up 94.8 percent.

As for blacks and African-Americans, we’re looking at 1.1 percent of the population in 2000 and 2 percent of the population in 2010. In other words, the number of blacks and African-Americans nearly doubled (from 183 to 356).

The next-most-populous race, Asians, rose as well, going from 1 percent to 1.1 percent (or 170 to 200).

3. North Canton’s families are growing

It’s just by a decimal, but over the span of 10 years, North Canton’s families have gotten bigger. In 2000, family size was 2.8 per family, and now it’s 2.82 per family.

4. More seniors are living alone

North Canton saw an uptick in the number of people, in general, living alone. The percent of single-person households went from 33.8 percent in 2000 to 36.3 percent in 2010 (That’s an increase from 2,405 people to 2,742 people).

Looking even closer at that number, we found more seniors are living by themselves nowadays. Those 65 and older living alone used to be 15.2 percent, whereas it’s 17.2 percent in 2010.

In that 17.2 percent, 4.3 percent were men and 12.9 percent women — nearly three times the number of men.

*Editor's note: Different numbers appeared in the original story. (Updated 10:05 p.m. May 12)