Hello. I am using some 1980 block & block group data from NHGIS; however, I cannot find any shapefiles that correspond with these boundaries. I am trying to determine the degree to which these match up with the 1990 boundaries, so is there anywhere that I can download the GIS data that displays the 1980 block and block group boundaries?
Thanks in advance for any help.
NHGIS does not currently provide GIS data for 1980 blocks or block groups. The TIGER/Line 1992 files do contains 1980 census blocks and block groups, but there are significant errors in those mapping files. There are hundreds of thousands of missing census blocks in the TIGER 1992 files. We feel as if the data quality is not good enough for release.
We are currently developing a methodology for producing 1980 and 1970 census block GIS files for the US. So, stay tuned for the release of those blocks over the next few years!
Okay, Thanks for the reply!
Hi, I was wondering if there’s been updates to this. I’m also interested in the 1980 Census block shapefile. Thank you.
We aim to release the first batch of 1980 block boundaries sometime this fall. It will cover around 20-25% of all 1980 blocks, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver, Seattle, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and around 40 smaller metro areas.
The first release of NHGIS 1980 block shapefiles is now available here. This first version covers 48 metropolitan areas, including Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco-Oakland, and 9 more of the 30 largest 1980 SMSAs. We’ll keep extending the files to include more areas in future releases.