Need help making maps through the Census website.

September 28, 2020 6:19 AM

Anyone figured out how to use the new Census website to make maps showing percentage of folks in each racial category? (link to data inside)

I used to be able to do this, but the new website has me at a loss. I have my data table , but when I try to create a map, all I get is a map of the location (county, place, or tract) but without any option (that I can see) to make a map with, say, the percentage of people who have identified as White Alone. Need to do this to complete some AFHMPs for work, so I must figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.

posted by qldaddy to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

To clarify: are you looking for % with a disability by demographic breakdowns? From what I can tell, that's how you've constructed your base table. So, if you want to show the % of people with a disability as broken down by race, go to the 'data variable' dropdown on the map page and scroll all the way down to "Percent with a disability—Subject—RACE AND HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN—White alone—Estimate ".
posted by Think_Long at 7:57 AM on September 28, 2020

I don't know how to do this at census.gov, but Census Reporter makes this easy: map of White Only percentage by county in Pennsylvania.

I got there from the front page by saying "Explore: Race", choosing "Pennsylvania" as the place , clicking "Divide into Counties" in the left menu, then clicking "Map".
posted by Nelson at 7:58 AM on September 28, 2020

Ugh, the new Census data site! You're not the only one who's having trouble.

I agree with Nelson in that I strongly prefer using censusreporter.org if I'm just doing straight visualizations and don't need to combine data tables (for that, I'm using ArcGIS, GoogleMaps, and some terrible manual mapping.)

I think you want to use a different data table; the one you've linked to deals with disability, and doesn't have the percent numbers for race (it has the absolute numbers, and one would think that they could provide %s in the same doc, but whatever.) Here are the steps I followed to generate a map of Lancaster county with % of white-only per census tract:

1. From https://data.census.gov/cedsci/, I entered "Lancaster County PA" in the search field, and selected the correct option from the results.
2. I went to the Race and Ethnicity section of the county page.
3. I clicked the "Customize Map" button in the section labeled "Hispanic or Latino".
4. This next three steps deal with the dropdowns in the upper left hand corner, directly under the text that should say "HISPANIC OR LATINO AND RACE—Total Population—Hispanic Or Latino (Of Any Race)—Percent Estimate"
5. I changed the Product to the 2018 ACS 5 year option (that gets us census tracts, which are my org's guiding geographic unit.)
5. I changed the Data Variable to "RACE - Total Population - One race - White - Percent Estimate".
6. I changed the Geography to census tract.
7. Click the "Clear Geos" icon (2nd from left) and then click Select.
8. Don't select the entire county! Select a portion, then add another portion, then more, until you get the full county. Every time I tried to select the full county, I got an error message about sharing and couldn't move forward. You might have better luck, though.
9. Click the cog in the legend and change the data classes to 9.
10. That should get you a color coded map. I can't get the percentages themselves to show, though, and I suspect that that's what you would like.

There's a grayed out "identify" icon that I'm curious about; it probably either allows you to identify the tract by tract ID or by the %, I imagine.
posted by punchtothehead at 11:19 AM on September 28, 2020

Will a chart work instead?

Otherwise my recommendation would be to either a) download the table data and make the map yourself b) give Census Bureau Customer Help Center a ring.
posted by oceano at 2:24 PM on September 28, 2020

I got very close using punchothehead's methodology, but I can't print or download the maps. I guess I can kludge with a print screen. Thanks for your help. this is very annoying because I have to do the County, a Place within the county, and a census tract within the place. And I have to do it for each race, disability, and families with children under 18.
posted by qldaddy at 3:20 PM on September 28, 2020