I’m having trouble finding CBSA codes for 2000 census data. My extracts have MSA_CMSAA, CMSA, MACCI, and PMSAA. It looks like CBSAs were developed for the 2000 census (About) but I can’t find those codes or boundaries. Are these available somewhere? If not, is there a way to use the codes that are available to convert to something as similar as possible to a CBSA (i.e., including both metropolitan and micropolitan areas) for 2000?
Dear Sarah,
Core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) were first published in 2003 based on results from the 2000 decennial census. The About page you linked to is bit misleading, and I understand your reading of it! The metropolitan areas published in the 2000 decennial products were to CMSA/PMSA/MSAs that were in existence as of April 1, 2000 (Census Day 2000). That’s why the 2000 data you’ve downloaded contains the MSA_CMAA, etc…codes on them.
If you want to create 2000 decennial-based counts for CBSAs (e.g., the CBSAs that were delineated in 2003), you can use the Historical Delineation files provided by the Census Bureau. I would start by looking at the June 2003 files on that site. You will need to do some processing of those delineation files to link them with 2000 census data.
Once you’ve converted the delineation files to a table, I recommend downloading county data for 2000 from NHGIS. You can link the county data to the delineation file and then generate CBSA-level estimates from 2000 decennial data.
Sincerely,
Dave Van Riper
IPUMS
This is excellent info, thanks so much! I’m doing all my analysis at the census tract level - is it accurate to say that once I have CBSA code by county, I can just link to my tract-level extracts via the county FIPS code, since tracts are nested within counties?
Yes, you can link the tract level data to the CBSA code using the county portion of the tract identifier. That should work well!
Dave