Following up on the previous question on State Economic Areas - code list

USA
1

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your reply! I looked at the appendix you attached but this did not answer my problems. It is true from the attachment I can figure out which counties go in which SEA. The problem is the SEAcode are also something different from the SEAs. It mostly coincides with the area, but for instance, Pennsylvania SEA 1 corresponds to both SEA code 360 and 363 (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/resources/c… : p.203). This is problematic for me when I only have the information on which counties are in which SEA in 1960, but the data I want to crosswalk is at the SEA level. If for example I have population of SEA 1 in 1960, I cannot figure out whether this corresponds to SEA code 360 or 363. And the IPUMS census 1940 also uses the codes, and not the SEA itself. Do you know of any documentation that specifies under which SEA code the corresponding SEA or counties are? I would really appreciate any guidance in this! Thank you!

2

If I am understanding correctly, you have data at the level of SEA codes in 1940 and at the level of SEA areas in 1960. If you do not have county identifiers, then it will not be possible to uniquely link the higher-level geography (1960) to each of the lower-level geographies (1940). In your example, Pennsylvania SEA “Area 1” in 1960 is simply the combination of the counties from the 1940 SEA codes 360 and 363; therefore, “Area 1” data corresponds to both of these codes, not just an individual SEA code.

Hope this helps.