What's New - September 2004
STAT-SCAN: The EconData.Net Newsletter
As a registered user of EconData.Net, you've indicated you are interested in receiving periodic updates about socioeconomic data issues. If you'd like to be removed from our mailing list, please send a message to info@econdata.net, subject UNSUBSCRIBE.
September is back to school for millions of students, and
this month's Site of the Month highlights the patterns and importance of
education to economic success in our knowledge-based economy. Educational
attainment continues to be a measure that is strongly correlated with economic
well being, not just for individuals, but for communities as well.
The latest estimates of state educational attainment have been recently
released by the Census Bureau. You
can get overall estimates of educational attainment by state, generated from the
Current Population Survey, for all states at:
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/cps2003/tab13.xls
In addition, you can also view data on educational
attainment by age, gender, race and Hispanic origin—but only for the 25 most
populous states.
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/cps2003/tab14.xls
The 2003 data highlights include a number of important trends. Overall, women made large gains in earning college degrees. Over the past decade, the fraction of adult women with a bachelor’s degree jumped nearly 7 percentage points, from 19 percent to 26 percent. During the same time, men had a 4-percentage-point increase going from 25 percent to 29 percent. Other highlights of note:
Technology is increasingly pervasive in all aspects of our life. Today, a majority of American households have cell-phones, computers, and internet access and the major media outlets have increasingly migrated to the Internet as a means of disseminating information. To give you some insight into the regional variations in these patterns, we've assembled data on cell-phone ownership, internet adoption, and media presence on the Internet.
Find
cell-phone ownership rates by metropolitan area at:
http://www.scarborough.com/press_releases/10_03_cellphone_local%20market.pdf
Which
cities have the highest adoption of Internet? The answer is here:
http://www.clickz.com/stats/markets/professional/article.php/2222631
The
blurring of boundaries between different media and the localization of global
internet converge when major metropolitan daily newspapers and television
stations operate their own news-oriented websites. As you might imagine, interest in tapping news through the
Internet varies dramatically across metropolitan areas.
Inside the news-hungry beltway, 40 percent of adults report having
visited the Washington Post’s website in the past month, compared with fewer
than one in eight of the residents of Southern California visiting the LA Times
website.
http://www.themediaaudit.com/LocalSpotBuy.pdf
The
growing popularity of sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, as well as the
growing number (and kinds) of commercial over the road trucks are counted in the
Census Bureau’s Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey (VIUS). State-by-state reports are just being released.
The data are a compiled from a combination of vehicle registration data
and surveys of commercial vehicle operators.
You can find out how many commercial trucks operate in a state, how many
miles they travel, their size, and key characteristics—numbers with automatic
transmissions, navigation systems, anti-lock brakes and other features.
Currently reports for fifteen states are available, with the remainder—and
a national summary—to be released by October.
More importantly, the release of these VIUS reports is the first set of
products related to the 2002 Economic Census.
Over the next few months, watch for more releases of these illuminating,
once-every-five-year looks at economic activity. The parade of Economic Census data starts with trucks—take
a look at:
http://www.census.gov/svsd/www/02vehinv.html
We
love Census Bureau economic data, but one problem we’ve always faced (and
tried to help our users with) is the sheer volume of data. There are simply so many series, its hard to know what’s
there, and how to find it. Recent
changes to Census Bureau’s main Economic Program’s page, however, make it
easier than ever to quickly find the data you need.
The center of the page features a carefully crafted table that shows each
of the major sub-national economic data series, and the various geographic
levels (state, county, etc., down to zip code) for which data are available.
Entries in the table show the most recent year for which data is
available at each geographic level. Click
on the year, and you go straight to the data you want.
Guaranteed to be the quickest way to navigate to economic data on the
Census website—make this page your first stopping point on the way to finding
the Census data you need.
http://www.census.gov/econ/www/
Our new links feature is back from an extended summer vacation with a grab bag of resources for mapping and GIS.
ESRI
Geography Network
On-line portal to maps and GIS data from around the country and the world.
http://www.geographynetwork.com/
GeoLytics,
Inc.
GIS Products $$
CDs of Census TIGER street, boundary, and zipcode geographic data.
http://www.geolytics.com/
MapDigger
Directory of
On-Line Maps
Links to free on-line maps, by topic.
http://www.mapdigger.com/
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
Spatial Data on the
Web
Links to primary on-line sources of maps and GIS data.
http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/subjects/gis/datausworld.html
Missouri
Census Data Center
Geographic
Correspondence Engine
Tool for determining geocodes within specified geographic area. Codes available
for states, metro areas, counties, places, census tracts, ZCTAs,
urban/rural, legislative districts, and school districts. Corresponds to Census
2000 geography.
http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/websas/geocorr2k.html
ThinkBurst
Media, Inc.
GIS Data Depot
Access to very extensive set of GIS resources for U.S. and other nations.
Low volume downloads available for free; high volume for fee.
http://data.geocomm.com/