Socioeconomic indicators for Functional Urban Regions in the United States, 1820-1970

Résumé 0

This study provides social, demographic, and economic data on the United States population compiled from ICPSR holdings of county-level census materials and enhanced with information obtained from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the United States Department of Commerce. County-level socioeconomic indicators were aggregated and reported for 171 functional urban regions encompassing the entire contiguous United States. These regions, established in the early 1960s by BEA, comprise whole counties surrounding a central Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area node that served as a recipient location of work commuting or a center of newspaper circulation, wholesale trade, or banking transactions. Total population counts, proportions of adults, males, African-Americans, and foreign-born, measures of population change, number of persons per household, and per capita values of manufactured and farm products are listed for census years between 1820-1970. For some years, data on per capita income were obtained from BEA publications. The study also includes derived measures computed by the principal investigators, such as logarithmic values of population totals, Z-scores of most of the basic indicators, and measures of decadal population growth for each region normalized by the rate of population growth for the nation as a whole. A description of the methods employed in computing these variables, as well as a report of the initial analysis using these data, is found in Sam Bass Warner, Jr. and Sylvia Fleisch, "The Past of Today's Present: A Social History of America's Metropolises, 1960-1860," JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY 3,1 (November 1976), 3-118.