Top Ten Posts of 2016

As I do at the beginning of each year, I have taken a look back at the most popular of my posts in the past year. Who are the winners among the 232 that I posted in 2016, based on the number of hits on each one? Here they are:

1. There was no huge winner from last year, in contrast to some previous years, and the top three blog posts all came just shortly after the surprising Presidential election win by Donald Trump. The winner was the one on disruptive demographics.

2. A close second, both in terms of popularity and timing, was about the concerns raised for the future of reproductive rights of women in the U.S. following Trump's win, combined with the fact that both the Senate and the House of Representatives kept their Republican (i.e., anti-women's rights) majorities, and the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court is about to change.

3. The third most popular occurred the day before #2, and summarized the demographics of the presidential election results, revealing a clearly divided house in American politics.

4. The fourth most popular was not on a very dramatic topic, but it caught a lot of attention nonetheless, dealing as it did with the implications of young versus old age structures around the globe.

5. For the fifth most popular post we have to go back to January of 2016, when I wrote about the religious demographics of the Middle East--a topic that will be on the front burner for quite a while.

6. The sixth spot was awarded to the post last month about the use of commuting data to define regions within the U.S. This was referring to a very innovative use of census and American Community Survey data, and I was pleasantly surprised to see its popularity.

7. The seventh most popular post was about the surprising discovery that there are more children in the U.S. than we thought, largely due to Hispanic kids that were missed in the census count.

8. The eighth spot takes us back to February and dealt with the accusations (fake news, perhaps) that Monsanto was responsible for the Zika virus problem. No matter how much you might hate Monsanto, it seems unlikely that you can pin the Zika virus on them.

9. Ninth place went to a summary of the demographics of the Brexit vote--last year's other surprise election outcome, which also was heavily influenced by demographic issues and composition.

10. Rounding out the top ten was a recent post, and actually one of my personal favorites, reflecting on the fact that as bad as things might seem, the world is a better place now than it used to be--we are living longer and healthier lives and are less poor as a species than we have ever been.

Keep that good thought with you as we head into 2017. Happy New Year!