Posted on: Thursday, March 4, 2004

More adults counted in new Census

Advertiser Staff

The number of adults in Hawai'i has grown about 11 percent in 10 years, according to new U.S. Census Bureau statistics released today.

Census figures report there were 917,212 people 18 years old and older in 2000. Figures from 1990 show there were 828,004 adults in Hawai'i.

Nearly 92 percent of those adults counted in 2000 were U.S. citizens, about the same rate in 1990. While that's lower than 41 other states, Hawai'i's citizenship rate is just below the national average of 92.4 percent.

California had the lowest citizenship rate among adults with 81 percent, while West Virginia had the highest rate of 99.4 percent.

While the voting-age population has grown, so did the number of registered voters, according to state Office of Elections statistics.

The office said 637,349 people were registered to vote in November 2000, up from 453,389 a decade earlier.

The number of people who voted in the general election also grew, although by a smaller clip, from 354,144 in 1990 to 371,033.

It's unclear whether there's a direct correlation between the increase in adults and the increase in voter turnout. The number of adult citizens counted by the Census Bureau appears to be calculated differently from eligible voter figures kept by the Office of Elections, which does not count people who are nonresident military or military dependents.