Baldwin, IL 94% male - Why?!? (Chester, Sparta: agriculture, military, work)

[FrederickW]

Does anyone know why Baldwin, IL is listed as 94% male? Is there some kind of military installation nearby, or did the data just get skewed?

[Chicago60614]

Weird, i see that stats about Baldwin, but nothing says why.

Almost everyone in town is between 19 and 25 and male. It's also almost 60% black.

There isn't a prison, and I don't see anything military, etc. Very strange. There must be some sort of institution or something.

[Drover]

Yeah, something is majorly skewing the data. If you look at Baldwin on a map, it's a tiny little town less than 15 square blocks. There's no way anywhere close to 3,500 people live in that tiny little town, even accounting for Baldwin addresses in the rural area around the city center. Plus in addition to being almost 60% black, the educational attainment data shows that only 28% of those over 25 have a high school degree or higher. That pretty much rules out military. And while one might suspect a prison, I doubt that too since a) I don't know of one in the area, and b) at some 3,000 inmates, that would be one gigantic prison. I wonder if it wasn't simply a data glitch at the Census Bureau...

[tallylady46]

This post caught my eye as I was scanning through this website. According to the city-data.com page, there are 3,193 people in prisons in Baldwin. If you look about 1/3 of the way down, it shows that. But if you look at the map, it looks like just a small town out in the middle of nowhere.

[Chicago60614]

Check this out:

Population 2005: 419
Population 2004: 420
Population 2003: 423
Population 2002: 427
Population 2001: 431
Population 2000: 3,627 (2000 Census)
Population 1990: 426 (1990 Census)

someone threw an extra "0" on the end of something, and I'm guessing it was the black male population in Baldwin!

[Ecky]

Hi,

I grew up in Baldwin. It's current population is about 350. I have never understood where the over 3,000 census figure came from. It shows up in various Internet sources. It is not 94% male and I don't believe there are any African Americans living there to date. The town of Sparta 8 miles to the east has always had the majority population of African Americans living in Randoph county. There is a state prison in Randoph county in Chester which is about twenty miles south of Baldwin, this prison population should not be the cause of the erroneous census figure for Baldwin.

Baldwin is a nice small little town, middle working class. It formerly relied on agriculture for its economy, but that has switched to nearby light industrial and a coal fired power plant.

[jtur88]

Maybe this will answer your question:

Households: 431
In family households: 384
In nonfamily households: 47
In group quarters: 3,207 (all institutionalized)

[dfreise]

http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/notes/cqr-il.pdf

[studedude]

Originally Posted by dfreise

http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/notes/cqr-il.pdf

The 3193 that were in group quarters in Baldwin were added to Chester when figures were revised.

[269]

During the last census, the state screwed up and added the prisoners from Chester's Menard Penitentiary to Baldwin's citizen count. Baldwin is a 99.9% white, small town in the middle of nowhere with approx 350 residents. And yes....we do have our fair share of women.