Hi there! I need to observe educational attainment over time (1980-2010) for each age at the county level. The NGHIS has some really nice time-series tables with educational attainment by age, but enough granularity - I need counts for each age (e.g., 25, 26, 27), while the time series tables are grouped into age categories (e.g., 25-34, 35-44, 45-64). I understand this is probably due to preserving confidentiality? Either way, would anyone know if this data is available elsewhere (outside of restricted data) - whether that is another IPUMS dataset or another source? Or, perhaps I am overlooking it in the NGHIS? Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!
I don’t believe a single year of age by county is available through NHGIS. Educational attainment can be summarized by age group at the county level using data from IPUMS USA, though not all counties are identifiable in the data for 1980 - 2010 samples (see this blog post for more information). This data is available nationwide, however, at the Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) level (groups of counties or census-defined places with a population of 100,000+ residents), available through PUMA for the 1990 - 2010 samples. Similarly, information on the county group of enumeration (contiguous areas with a combined population of 100,000+ residents) is available for 1980 through CNTYGP98. The Missouri Census Data Center Geocorr Application provides crosswalks for Census data at several geographic levels, including PUMAs and Counties.
Hi @Grace_Cooper! Thanks so much for the thorough response. I was actually using the IPUMS data initially but gave it up because I was wanting to do a county-level analysis. I’m going to give it another shot with the Geocorr application you mention here. Thanks for pointing me in that direction!
Best,
Heather