What's New - February 2003

Site of the Month: STATS Indiana US Counties IN Profile

 
February's Site of the Month is "The US Counties IN Profile" site developed by Stats Indiana.  If you're like most data users, you like to tap a wide variety of data sources to characterize social or economic conditions in a particular area.  It's frequently a hassle to chase down data from the agency websites of each of the different agencies that produce data.  Wouldn't it be nice if somebody pulled the most widely used data from a variety of sources into a single page for each county?  Well, thank the Hoosiers, because StatsIndiana, the statistics arm of state government has done just that.  Their "US Counties IN Profile" page lets you rank all the counties in the US, either nationally or by state, against one another using data series from a variety of sources, including all of the big three:  Census, BLS and BEA.  

You can quickly find data for a single county, or compare any two counties side by side; you can see counties ranked by their standing on each variable either nationally or within a particular state.  There are tabs for each subject to quickly scan through data on population, housing, income, wages and employment.  Employment data are disaggregated by major industry, and industry shares of total employment are computed for you.  This is the kind of integrated approach to data that's helpful when you want the basic data, and you want it quickly.  Why didn't somebody think of this sooner?  Don't wait, pay a visit to:  http://www.stats.indiana.edu/uspr/a/us_profile_frame.html

 

New Links Added

The focus is on health and safety issues for this month's featured new links.  We have data on automobile accidents, children's health and a variety of health-related environmental indicators..  

National Center for Statistics & Analysis, NHTSA
Fatality Analysis Reporting System
Reports on crashes, occupants, pedestrians, alcohol, and fatalities, 1994-latest year. Query tool and mapping tool available as well. FTP download available for prior years.
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/report.cfm?stateid=0&year=2000&title=Sta

National Safety Council
Air Bag Fatalities
Count of air bag-induced fatalities by state. (May 2001)
http://www.nsc.org/partners/status3.htm

Population Connection
Kid-Friendly Cities Health Improvement Report Card
Data and rankings on infant mortality, births to teens, and low-weight  births for 165 cities, 1990 and 1998. (Published June 2002)
http://www.populationconnection.org/Communications/Health/healthimprov

U.S. Public Interest Research Group
Power Plant Pollution and Child Health
State fact sheets on air, water, and land releases from power plants and exposure to children.
(May 2002)
http://uspirg.org/uspirg.asp?id2=6275&id3=USPIRG&

Pollution from Power Plants
Data on carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrous oxide emissions from individual power plants, by state. Also, data on the incidence of asthma in counties likely to not meet pollution standards. 
(May 2002)
http://uspirg.org/uspirg.asp?id2=6952&id3=USPIRG&

Drinking Water and Human Health
State reports on the impacts of farm and urban runoff on drinking water quality (January 2002)
http://uspirg.org/uspirg.asp?id2=5041&id3=USPIRG&

Environmental Reports
Periodic reports with data on pollution, by state.
http://uspirg.org/uspirg.asp?id2=5663&id3=USPIRG&

SBA Releases 2000 Data

The U.S. Census Bureau has released its Statistics of U.S. Business (SUSB) for 2000.  SUSB is partially funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy and lists firm size data by industry and geographic area.  You'll find employment totals by firm size for states and metropolitan areas, and dynamic data on business births and deaths and expansion and contraction, including both year-to-year and five-year changes.  The SBA has also added nonemployer data to this series, picking up many small businesses that have traditionally flown beneath the radar of some studies. 

Data is available from 1988 to 2000 at www.sba.gov/advo/stats/data.html.   

New and Improved:  American Fact Finder

For a long time, much of the data you found on the web is just the electronic analog of historical print publications.  More and more though, some data providers are taking more advantage of the interactive quality of web technology to rethink the way they enable users to find and manipulate the data.  One of the best sites in this regards is the Census Bureau's American Fact Finder, one of the most intuitive and interactive ways of wending one's way through a mountain of data that has yet been devised.  Just last week, Census unleashed its latest round of tweaks to the Fact Finder--now you can save queries in one session and reload them in a subsequent session and filter data according to variable values.  The interface has become easier to use with a "clear all selections function" and improvements to mapping as well.  To find out more, visit the Census website at:  http://factfinder.census.gov/home/en/whats_new_8.1.html

Who Pays State and Local Taxes?

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has released a new, nationwide study of the burden of state and local taxes on families with different incomes. Entitled "Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of Tax Systems in All 50 States" shows the fraction of income paid in total taxes by families in each quintile of the income distribution. The study shows that most state tax systems are regressive: the poor pay a higher fraction of their income in taxes than the
well off. Only four states have progressive tax systems (the wealthy pay a higher effective rate) and eight are proportional (the wealth and poor pay roughly the same fraction of their income in taxes). The full report contains a detailed analysis of results for each state, as well as a summary of nationwide trends. You'll find it in a PDF file at:
http://www.itepnet.org/wp2000/text.pdf

BLS terminates Mass Layoff Statistics Program

During this recession, one of the most telling indicators of acute economic distress has been the Bureau of Labor Statistics Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) data. Our friends at ACCRA relayed to us the news that this series was discontinued by BLS, when its sister agency in the Department of Labor, the Employment & Training Administration (ETA), eliminated funding for data collection. The executive decision was made on December 12 and announced during the most recent MLS press release on December 24. You'll find the official announcement at: http://www.bls.gov/mls/home.htm

Attached is a link to articles in the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle-which picked up on the demise of the statistical series:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63950-2003Jan1.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/03/MN120712.DTL

This has been an extremely useful indicator for many people working in economic development and workforce programs around the country. ACCRA is encouraging its members to contact their Congressional representatives about this decision, especially if they find the data valuable--you might want to consider adding your voice on this issue.