Reply #14: well we might just think

[iverglas]

"It's just darned difficult to find stats for
individual communities this small."

... that it's going to be even darned difficulter to find significant statistics -- let alone draw any conclusion about anything at all from those statistics alone -- for a place with a population that seems to have peaked at 13,000, so far.

Cripes.

I can think of some other numbers you might want to be crunching.

For example (apparently Kennesaw is in Cobb County) ...

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/saipe/estimate/cty/cty13067.htm
(you'll have to ask google to find a cached version for that url; it wasn't good)

Model-Based Income and Poverty Estimates for Cobb County, Georgia in 1997

Median household income - $52,924

My my. Relatively prosperous little place, is it? Looks that way, from what I can tell from here: http://www.census.gov/housing/saipe/estmod00/est00_GA.dat
Maybe not too many unemployed riffraff in residence in Kennesaw, lying in wait to hold up or burglarize or kill the good burghers of this little burg?

Now, it seems that Kennesaw is not the wealthiest bit of Cobb County, but still ...
http://www.kennesaw.ga.us/Demographics_Income.aspx

Per capita income in Kennesaw has usually been a little higher than Georgia's average except for the late 1970's to the mid 1980's. Probable reasons for the resurgence of Kennesaw's per capita income in the mid-1980's include its growing function as a bedroom community to Fulton County, which has the highest wages in the region, and job growth in Cobb extending all the way up to the Kennesaw area. When Town Center Mall opened in 1986 the area became a job center in its own right.

Since 1969 Kennesaw's median household income has been even higher than the per capita income in comparison to Georgia. The higher household income can in part be attributed to higher per capita incomes, but also significant is the larger household size and higher labor force participation rates for Kennesaw. The combined factors provide for more people in a house with more of them in the work force. Both of Kennesaw's income measures have traditionally been lower than Cobb County's, though due to Kennesaw's larger household size, household incomes have been closer to Cobb's level than the per capita income measure. The 2000 Census will more than likely show Kennesaw's income measures will be closer to Cobb County's than ever, though Kennesaw has quite a way to go to catch up. While the number of households in Kennesaw and Cobb making under $30,000 is about the same, 33% to 32% respectively, 28% of Cobb's households make over $60,000 compared to 16% of Kennesaw's.

All in all, a community with higher-than-average per capita and household incomes, a higher proportion of families (more people per household = fewer young single people) ... yeah, that's the kind of place I'd be expecting to see a murder a minute.

Cripes, again.

I really do hope that no one is asking me to conclude, from a few years of life in what appears to be a rich little bedroom community, and with no information about actual rates of firearm ownership to boot, that a law telling everybody to buy a gun will make all our cities and towns crime-free in short order.

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