Lab 2 Census 2000

Census 2000

The United States government administers a census every 10 years to acquire information regarding all the members of its population, citizens and non-citizens alike. Its primary function is to enumerate information allowing the government to accurately allocate congressional seats, electoral votes, financial and other government funded assistance. Through the census procedure the government compiles and stores information in a multitude of categories. This information is easily found on the census.gov website and is used by the government and public to see numeric trends and patterns throughout the nation. This enumeration of information may be used in conjunction with geographic information systems to visually project all of these tabulated trends. An example of creating a geographic information system using attribute data from census.gov, a secondary source, is creating a map displaying the spatial distribution of different races by county. This is done by properly joining attribute tables from census.gov to an attribute data table from a geographic information system via a common factor. In the maps above, the county shape file attribute tables were joined to the ranking tables by race alone through state and county FIPS codes.

The first map above is a geographic information system depicting the percentage of Asian population density per county. It is projected in a North American Lambert Conformal Conic format. A grayscale is used to show the different densities of population, darker being higher density. The Asian population is concentrated along the coasts, most notably the West Coast. Honolulu County has the highest percentage Asian population in the United States. Besides Hawaii, California is home to the majority of counties with the highest percentage of Asians. On the East Coast, the highest concentrations of Asians are located in counties within the New England states. Mid-west counties as a whole have the least percentage of Asians.

The second map above is a geographic information system displaying the percentage of Black population density per county. This map is also projected in a North American Lambert Conformal Conic format. It is quite visible that the Black population is concentrated in the “Bible Belt” or south eastern United States. Mississippi and Alabama have the counties with the highest concentration of Black people in the United States. Jefferson County, Mississippi boasts the highest percentage Black population, 86.5%. There are a few locations outside the “Bible Belt” near major cities with a relative high percentage of Black population.

Last but not least, the final map illustrates the spatial distribution of some Other race stand alone across the United States, by percent. This map was created with a GCS_Notrh_American_1983 projection. This map projection is not common but was used to show the difference between the two different map projections. The highest concentration of Other race population is located in the south western United States along the Mexican border. Sunbelt States from the Northwest to Texas hold significant concentrations of Other race but the trend stops in Louisiana. The Sunbelt states of Texas, New Mexico and California are home to the counties with the highest percentage of other race population. Imperial County, California holds the highest percentage of Other race population, 39.1%.