Do we have to wait 20 years for the results?

Let’s include notable facts about Fifth Censuses!

In the Fifth American Census, 1830, enumerators recorded only the names of the heads of household. Other people just were numbers. This doesn’t change until 1850. It was the first census to show the US with a city over 200,000 people (New York). Interestingly, the next largest cities (Baltimore and Philadelphia) barely cracked 80,000. New Orleans, the fifth largest city, was the largest off the East Coast. Two Philadelphia suburbs, Northern Liberties and Southwark, are in the top 10 largest cities. The largest city off the coast is Cincinnati and Albany, both at just under 25,000. The 20th largest city is just over 11,000 people. It’s easy to forget how small American cities were to this point. Slaves were enumerated separately, of course. They also interesting recorded the number of “deaf and dumb”, a question not asked earlier (I don’t think). If anyone knows the historical impetus for this question, I’m interested.

The Fifth Turkish census was conducted in October 1950. Census were during this period every five years, rather than every ten. A quarter of the population lived in cities and towns, which is essentially where it was at the first census 1927. You start seeing more change in the next few censuses, though it wouldn’t pass 50% until the 1980s. In 1950, 90% of the country is housewives, the unemployed, or farmers. The census reveals that less than 3% is primarily employed involved in industry.

Interestingly, population density rose considerably in the same period—from 18 km^2 to 27 km^2 which mostly a testament to how relatively empty the country had been after the 1914-1923 of constant war, ethnic cleansing, and population exchange. This trend continues, in 1950 you start to see the Turkish Bulgarians fleeing oppression in Bulgaria, Jewish Turks moving to newly independent Israel, and Greek Turks moving to Greece (there wasn’t any significant event for Greeks in the 1945-1950 period, but the impoverishing “Wealth Tax” targeted at minorities occurred in 1942 and war prevented earlier migration). One of the provinces with the largest growth since 1927 is not coincidentally the one of the Bulgarian border. That exodus only really started this year, and would show up more in the next census. Jews, and even more so Greeks, leaving would increase sharply two censuses later, after the 1955 Istanbul Pogrom. The underdeveloped Kurdish majority Southeast at this point has a literacy rate of 0-20%. The more developed West Coast has a literacy rate above 30% as a rule, with Istanbul and Bursa achieving literacy rates above 50%. This is a partial consequence of the “language revolution” which put the Turkish language into the easier to read Latin script (Arabic was particularly hard to read because it was never adapted to show vowels in Turkish) and partially to a massive educational push. I’m not sure anywhere in the country had more than 20-30% literacy in the first 1927 census but I don’t have the data in front of me right now.

Once you've finished the survey don't forget to hop on over and join us in the party thread!

This question

Which statement best describes your use of the wiki, Frequently Asked Questions page, or search feature before asking a question?

has the following choices:

I habitually search the wiki, FAQ, or subreddit before asking any question.

I search the wiki, FAQ, or subreddit if I suspect I'm about to ask a question that's been asked before.

I did not know there was a wiki, FAQ, or search feature.

I have never asked a question

It's missing an obvious answer choice for someone who has asked a question before, and knows about the wiki, but has never used it before.

The list of countries in Asia (when you ask where the participant is from) does not include Taiwan, which nearly made me abandon the survey right there. I don't know if this was a conscious decision or if the list was imported from some other source, but it was very disappointing either way, and particularly ironic given that this week's theme is "Independence Movements."

(There is an "Other" option which I used, but having to deal with this all the time in drop-down boxes is extremely irritating.)

Done! I'm glad I could do something minor that helps this sub because I'm too stupid to actually answer a post.

You should sticky this post so it doesn't get lost

The question regarding from which device/service we browse Reddit could use a 'I browse this way most of the time' option for extra precision. It's a rather big gap from 'the only way' to 'some of the time'. Like, I'd say I browse Reddit 90% of the time via desktop and 10% of the time via phone, so desktop being 'the only way I browse' seems inaccurate.

Think y'all kinda screwed up the age question by requiring a specific age rather than broad, as was done in the past.
Don't mind giving a range, but not birth year. Probably a little overboard on the privacy thing here, but it's habitual by now.

I found the wording of demographic option 1 confusing. What does it mean to "list my identities"?

It's not clear to me what kind of identities you'd like.

Edit: a single letter

I think there should be an option to say that "race" or ethnicity is not a relevant part of your identity.

At least for me personally it's not relevant whether someone is white or Hispanic and distinguishing between those arbitrary categories seems rather American.

Done and done

I was a bit surprised that Russia in your survey is located in Asia. Now, that's a really arguable question, but I still think that calling it an European country is significantly less arguable. Nonetheless, good survey! Can't wait to see results.

Glad to get to voice my thoughts about the sub. I will be interested to see what people think about the strictness of the submission qualifications, since I always view it to be the high point and draw of AskHistorians.

exited out before I thought to edit my response.

I had feedback that doesn't really fit anywhere.

I love the subreddit and everything the mods do, however, it really seems like a lot of flaired users just never answer any follow-up questions in threads. It's extremely disappointing, and I wonder why it happens, since the follow up answers don't have to be as sourced as the main answers (IIRC).

As a person has lurked here for a few years, it really seems like leaving any sort of comment at all is pointless.

All this to say, thank you to the people who DO answer in-thread follow-up questions.

Argh! I put Amber Butchart as having done a piece about The Ploughman! She did the Hedge Cutter! (Still very interesting!) https://youtu.be/wtFoYua2dQw

​

Here's the bit on The Ploughman! https://youtu.be/RNAMbRt5eI8

You asked for historians I follow on Twitter, which I listed. I also follow other authors who write historical nonfiction and may not necessarily be historians. I did not list them.

I note that for the political views you didn't include a category for libertarianish/free market radical. (Unless it was under the term 'liberal', but that has a different context in the USA). I'm certainly not conservative or moderate - flat income taxes and massive zoning reform to bring down housing prices are definitely out of step with the majority of NZers.