Is it possible to find Asian population by county for 1950 and 1960? Prior to that, I can aggregate the microdata and starting in 1970, the NHGIS provides the data. However, for 1950 and 1960, it seems like NHGIS only provides white, black, and non-white. Is there anywhere else to find this?
County-level Asian population counts are available in the 1950 and 1960 published volumes from the Census Bureau. You will have to hand-enter the data - I don’t know of any source that has digitized these data.
The 1950 publications that have the data are available at https://www.census.gov/library/public…. For each state, you will want to look at the “General Characteristics” volume, and Table 47.-.lndians, Japanese, imd Chinese, by sex, for selected counties and cities in particular.
The 1960 publications are available at https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decen…. Click on the Census of Population and Housing, 1960 link; then the 1960 Census of Population link; and finally, Vol. I. Characteristics of the Population link. You will then need to download the Full Document ZIP file for each state. You will then want to find Table 28. Characteristics of the Population, For Counties, 1960. This is usually in the Chapter 3 PDF for each state. It provides counts for Japanese, Chinese, Filipino for each county.