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February 2021
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U.S. Census Bureau History: 40th President of the United States Ronald W. Reagan
Ronald W. Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, IL. After a career in radio and motion pictures,
Reagan was elected governor of California in 1967. He defeated President Jimmy Carter to become the 40th
President of the United States in 1980.
Photo courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Fortieth President of the United States Ronald W. Reagan was born on February 6, 1911. Following college and more than 3 decades in the entertainment industry, Reagan was elected as the 33rd governor of California. Despite losing the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1976 to Gerald R. Ford, he rallied the support of his party and the nation to decisively defeat President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Following his 2004 death, Democrats and Republicans remembered Reagan as one of the most significant and loved American leaders of the 20th Century.
Born in Tampico, IL, Reagan moved frequently, living in Monmouth, IL; Galesburg, IL; and Chicago, IL; before settling in Dixon, IL. (Congress passed PL-107-137 approving the purchase of the "Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home" in Dixon—a museum listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982—by the National Parks Service on Reagan's 91st birthday in 2002. A private organization continued operating the museum until turning over the property to the National Parks Service in 2018.) After graduating from Eureka College in Eureka, IL, Reagan began his entertainment career as an announcer at local radio stations before moving in 1932 to Des Moines, IL, where he became a Chicago Cubs baseball sportscaster at the WHO radio station. While traveling with the Cubs in California, he scheduled an acting audition and landed a contract with Warner Bros studios in 1937.
Reagan's first screen acting credit was for 1937's Love is on the Air. Over the next 35 years, he would appear in dozens of films and television series alongside some of Hollywood's greatest actors and actresses, including Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Barbara Stanwyck, Doris Day, Olivia de Havilland, and Jane Wyman, his first wife. After serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild 
(1947–1952 and 1959–1960), Reagan rose to prominence on the national political stage for his October 27, 1964, "A Time for Choosing" speech in support of Republican presidential candidate Barry M. Goldwater. The speech was not enough for Goldwater to defeat Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 Presidential Election, but it convinced California's Republican Party to nominate Reagan as their candidate in the state's 1966 gubernatorial race. Reagan defeated incumbent Pat Brown to become California's 33rd governor, serving from 1967 to 1975.
In 1976, Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination. Despite several early primary victories, Ford narrowly won the 1976 nomination. Four years later, Reagan returned to the campaign trail, won the Republican nomination, and a landslide victory against President Jimmy Carter and Independent candidate John B. Anderson, winning 50.7 percent of the popular vote and 489 electoral votes to Carter's 49. Reagan won a second term in the Oval Office after defeating Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro with another landslide victory in the 1984 Presidential Election.
During Reagan's 8-year presidency, he worked with democrats to improve the nation's economy, lower taxes, cut spending, and reduce inflation. Internationally, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union grew particularly tense—as military spending rose, the two nation's engaged in a nuclear arms race, and American- and Soviet-sponsored regimes skirmished in countries like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Angola, and Nicaragua. By the end of Reagan's second term in office, his hardline approach toward communism and the Soviet Union began to bear fruit as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the United States agreed to reduce the size of their nuclear arsenals and Soviet influence over Eastern Europe weakened. In December 1991—2 years after Reagan left office—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (consisting of Russia and 14 nearby countries) collapsed.
Reagan's presidency ended on January 20, 1989, when his successor, former Vice President of the United States George H.W. Bush took office. Reagan and wife Nancy moved to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, CA, accepted public speaking engagements, and oversaw the construction of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA. Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, Reagan gradually withdrew from the public eye. He died on June 5, 2004, and was buried at his presidential library on June 11, 2004. Leaders and dignitaries from around the world attended Reagan's funeral. Among those who paid their respects was former Cold War rival Mikhail Gorbachev. In the June 7, 2004, edition of the New York Times, Gorbachev wrote: [Reagan was] a true leader, a man of his word and an optimist, he traveled the journey of his life with dignity and faced courageously the cruel disease that darkened his final years. He has earned a place in history and in people's hearts."
You can learn more about the life of Ronald Reagan, including his entertainment, military, and political careers using census data and records. For example:
- Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, IL, on February 6, 1911. One year before his birth, the 1910 Census found Tampico's population was 849. In 2019, the American Community Survey estimated the village was home to 734.
- When Ronald Reagan began his radio sportscasting job for Des Moines, IL, radio station WHO in 1932, 18,450,000 homes reported having at least one radio. The number grew to 30,600,000 in 1942, and 42,800,000 in 1952. By 1962, 51,305,000 households had radios and 48,855,000 owned a television. In 1998, 99 percent of homes in the United States had access to a radio. The U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation reported that in 2010, 98.5 percent of American homes owned a television and more than 92 percent of households could watch Ronald Reagan movies on their VCR or DVD players.
- Ronald Reagan enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves and was commissioned a second lieutenant in May 1937. Following America's entry into World War II, he was ordered to active duty and assigned to Fort Mason, in San Francisco, CA. He transferred to the Army Air Force's Public Relations Unit and then the First Motion Picture Unit. In the First Motion Picture Unit, Reagan served alongside other radio, stage, and screen stars, including Clark Gable, William Holden, Alan Ladd, Burgess Meredith, Jimmy Stewart, and future Lone Ranger star Clayton Moore. In 1943, Reagan narrated the Academy Award-winning documentary Beyond the Line of Duty. He also narrated For God and Country, Cadet Classification, and The Rear Gunner, and appeared in the Irving Berlin musical This is the Army.
- Ronald Reagan was one of the more than 16.1 million Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II, and was one of eight U.S. presidents to serve in that conflict. Most notable was Supreme Allied Commander Europe Dwight D. Eisenhower, followed by John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and George H. W. Bush. President Jimmy Carter was a cadet at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, during World War II and graduated in 1946. His military service dates earned him the World War II Victory and American Campaign medals awarded to all servicemen and women who served between the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, HI, and 1946. In 2000—4 years before his death—Reagan was one of 5,719,898 surviving World War II veterans in the United States. By 2019, the American Community Survey estimated 380,327 World War II veterans remained.
- Ronald Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild —a labor union serving entertainment professionals—from 1947 to 1952 and 1959 to 1960. During his tenure, Reagan not only guided the guild through the repressive anti-communist hearings led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, but was also instrumental in securing payments for actors whose television programs were "rerun" after the initial airing and theatrical movies shown on television. Other prominent acting Screen Actors Guild presidents included James Cagney, Charlton Heston, and Little House on the Prairie actress Melissa Gilbert.
- Ronald Reagan was one of six presidents to be wounded during assassination attempts and one of only two presidents to survive the attacks. On March 30, 1981—less than 4 months after his inauguration—a would-be assassin shot Reagan as he exited a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC. Secret service agents did not realize how serious the president had been injured until the presidential limousine sped away from the shooting scene. Reagan suffered a broken rib, punctured lung, and serious internal injuries, but recovered and was released from the hospital April 11. The other fatal and near-fatal assassination attempts on U.S. presidents were as follows:
- On April 14, 1865, Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. The president died from his injuries the next morning.
- Charles Guiteau shot James Garfield at Washington, DC's Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station on July 2, 1881. Garfield succumbed to his wounds more than 11 weeks later.
- William McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz as he greeted visitors to the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, on September 6, 1901. He died 8 days later.
- Former president Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest on October 14, 1912, by a deranged bar owner while campaigning as a Progressive Party candidate in the 1912 Presidential Election in Milwaukee, WI. Roosevelt survived thanks to the 50-page speech folded in his breast pocket, but lost the election to Woodrow Wilson.
- John F. Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald as his motorcade traveled through Dallas, TX, on November 22, 1963.
- Ronald Reagan was elected as the United States' 40th President the same year as the 1980 Census. In 1980, the census recorded the U.S. resident population at 226,542,199. George H. W. Bush—former Vice President of the United States under Reagan—was president 10 years later when the U.S. Census Bureau conducted the 1990 Census after which the agency reported the nation's population had grown 9.8 percent to 248,709,873.
- In addition to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA, Ronald Reagan's legacy will long be remembered thanks to the many highways, parks, municipal buildings, schools, and warships named in his honor. Examples include the Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway connecting Birmingham and Decatur, AL; the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana, CA; Ronald Reagan Elementary Schools in Bakersfield and Chowchilla, CA; Ronald Reagan Middle School in Grand Prairie, TX; Ronald W. Reagan Doral High School in Doral, FL; the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC; Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, VA; and the Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76).
- Following a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, Ronald Reagan died on June 5, 2004, with his wife Nancy by his side. A public viewing at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, CA, was followed by 34 hours "laying in state" at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, and a state funeral on June 11. The president was laid to rest at his presidential library later that day. Nancy Reagan, his wife of 52 years, died on March 6, 2016. She rests beside her husband of 52 years at the library's Reagan Memorial.
Before being elected as the 40th President of the United States in 1980, Ronald Reagan worked as a radio sportscaster, was an actor and narrator for Army Air Force's
First Motion Picture Unit, president of the Screen Actors Guild, and governor of California. As a politician, he was frequently referred to as "the Gipper"—a nickname
given for his portrayal of George Gipp in the 1940 biopic "Knute Rockne, All American" about the celebrated Notre Dame football coach.
Photo courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Did you know?
The U.S. population more than tripled during Ronald Reagan's lifetime.
One year before Reagan's birth, the 1910 Census counted 92,228,496. While governor of California, the 1970 Census recorded 203,302,031; and in 2000the last census before his 2004 death, the population had grown to 281,421,906.
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At the Movies
Before he was a movie star and politician, Ronald Reagan was an announcer at several small Iowa radio stations, before working his way up to become the Chicago Cubs "play-by-play" sportscaster for radio station WHO 1040 AM in Des Moines, IA.
His work in radio may have helped Reagan land his first starring role in the movie Love Is on the Air about a newscaster who exposed government corruption. When it premiered in 1937, 88 million Americans attended the movies weekly and spent $676 million.
Reagan's last starring role was in 1964's crime drama, The Killers. That year, 44 million Americans went to the movies every week and spent $913 million annually.
Today, the movie industry remains an important part of the United States' economy. In 2017, the economic census found that the nation's 4,473 motion picture theaters (except drive-in theaters, NAICS 512131), had sales of more than $15.8 billion and employed 151,651.
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This Month in Census History
Named for committee chair Dr. Ralph J. Watkins, the "Watkins Commission" met in late 1953, and issued its Appraisal of Census Programs: Report of the Intensive Review Committee to the Secretary of Commerce or "Watkins Commission Report" on February 16, 1954.
The report urged renewed funding for the economic census, noting that the data serve "as a basis for innumerable decisions and actions, throughout our national life." In response, Congress passed Public Law 83-411 providing for censuses of manufacturing, mineral industries, and other businesses in 1955.
The Census Bureau continues to conduct the economic census every 5 years with the most recent being the 2017 Economic Census.
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