What's New - December 2004
STAT-SCAN: The EconData.Net Newsletter
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If you're in the upper left-hand corner of the nation, then this month's Site of the Month is for you. (Even if you're elsewhere, this is a great site for illustrating how to neatly display a range of socioeconomic indicators). The Indicators website is a convenient source of information on states, counties, reservations, and tribes in the Foundation's eight-state region. It is designed to make basic indicators of social and economic well-being easily accessible to non-technical users--like elected officials, volunteers, and average citizens--and it does a great job.
For each of the counties in the Foundation's eight state
region--Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington--the website includes 34 indicators in eight general
categories: population, income and poverty, employment, family and kids,
education, housing, health, crime and safety. The site also includes a
subset of this data for selected communities, Native American Reservations and
individual tribes. The site includes text summaries that highlight major trends in each indicator. You'll also find information displayed with graphs and maps. Users who want to analyze the indicators further can download data in
excel spreadsheets.
http://www.indicators.nwaf.org/
Last month, EconData.Net published a special alert on the status of funding for the American Community Survey. We're pleased to say, that in response to a widespread outpouring of concern from the data-using community, Congress included funding for continuing the American Community Survey in the federal budget for the current fiscal year. Many thanks to all those who weighed in on this issue!
You can read a brief note on the restoration of funding
from the Washington Post at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5551-2004Nov22.htm
Speaking of the effects of the voice of the data community on federal statistical programs: You might remember that back in the spring we informed StatScan readers that the Bureau of Economic Analysis was open to letters of support for the development of a new annual Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP) measure. We are very pleased to say that in response to our readers' thoughtful, passionate missives, BEA has included development of the GMP measure in its draft FY2005-2009 strategic plan. (BEA included creation of a metro disposable income measure as well.) You can see the relevant text and timetable on pp. 7 and 17 of the draft strategic plan, at http://www.bea.gov/bea/about/Director.htm#Strategic
As good as this news is, the work is not yet done. BEA has requested public and review and comment of its plan, after which it will publish the final version. Comments, to be sent to comments@bea.gov, are due by February 28, 2005. In these times of extraordinarily tight budgets, it is critical for the future of a GMP measure that support continue to be shown. Please take a moment to review the relevant portion of the plan and submit your comments. As before, we ask that when you submit your comments, please cc us at comments@econdata.net. Good work, all who spoke up!
One of the key
indicators of the development of new knowledge is the number of patents issued
to inventors. The U. S. Patent and Trademark Office recently released its
latest tabulation of patent data, with total through December 31, 2003, by state
and country of origin. In 2003, the total number of patents issued ranged
from a high of nearly 20,000 in California to 37 in Alaska. You can view
state by state rankings, with historical data from 1990 onwards, at
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_utl.htm
This month's new links feature's in-depth profiles of two sites that offer detailed pictures of commuting patterns.
Tabulations from the decennial census are still an invaluable source of information about the patterns of commuter traffic among geographic areas in the United States. However, working with this rich source of data can frequently be difficult and complicated. Mercifully, the Missouri Census Data Center has already done a fair amount of work creating a more user-friendly way to track county to county flows of workers between the nation's 3,000 counties.
The site
contains reports on county to county commuting for each state--in both html and
pdf formats. Each state has two reports as well, one showing the place of
work by each workers county of residence and a second report showing the
residence county of all workers sorted by the county in which they work. Reports
list all counties that account for more than one-half of one percent of all
commuter flows. You'll find the index of these state reports at:
http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/pub/data/workflow/Reports/index.html
Another gem from the 2000 Census is estimates of average travel times within metropolitan areas. The Federal Highway Administration (part of the Department of Transportation) provides a helpful summary of travel patterns in its report "Journey to Work Trends in the United States and its Major Metropolitan Areas 1960 - 2000"
According to the report, American workers are spending more time than ever getting to work. In 2000, the average travel time to work was 25 minutes and 30 seconds, and increase of over two minutes compared to 1990. Ten million workers nationwide now travel 60 minutes or more to their jobs, and 6.7 million of them are workers in large MSAs. Workers in major metro areas had longer commutes than workers in the rest of the nation. Every one of the 49 metro areas of 1 million or more population saw increased travel time to work.
Average travel times range for large metropolitan areas range from highs of
34 minutes in New York and 31 minutes in Atlanta, to lows of about 21 minutes in
Buffalo, Hartford, Grand Rapids and Rochester. Full details are available
at:
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ctpp/jtw/jtw3.htm
A very joyous holiday season to all of our readers--we'll see you with a new edition of Stat-Scan in the New Year!