I’m attempting to create a complete list of active general purpose local governments in the year 2000. I have previously done a similar analysis using 2020 data from NHGIS, and was able to use the FUNCSTAT variable in the county subdivision and Census place geographies to identify which of these correspond to real, active local governments and which were statistical creations. However, I just downloaded the analogous data for 2000, and it does not appear that the FUNCSTAT column is available for that year. Is that correct, and if so is there a way to access this variable for local governments in the year 2000?
Thank you!
This is a well-timed inquiry! I’m working right now on re-adding several contextual variables, like FUNCSTAT, to the older NHGIS datasets. Our initial specs kept FUNCSTAT omitted, but your post reminds me that we included FUNCSTAT in the new 2020 data. I’ll make sure we add it in older census years as well.
My aim is to release this update, at latest, along with our release of ACS 2021 1-year data, which we hope to do sometime in October 2022. Until then, the only other public source of this info that I’m aware of is the original 2000 summary files. (Here’s the web page for Summary File 1.) Those can be difficult to process, but the info is there if you need it soon.
Wow–that’s fantastic, thank you so much! I’m not sure how commonly used the variable is, but having it for 2020 has made my life so much easier. The other variable that would be a huge help to have for 2000 is LSAD, the legal/statistical area description code.
I really appreciate this!!
Yes, LSAD is on our list to add, too…
And now I remember that we have both LSAD and FUNCSTAT in the NHGIS shapefiles that use the “2010 TIGER/Line+” basis or later. If you use software that can read shapefiles (GIS or some stats software packages), you could get FUNCSTAT for 2000 from the corresponding NHGIS shapefile. Just make sure to select the file that uses a basis of 2010 TIGER/Line +.
I can now report that we released an update last Friday that adds FUNCSTAT and LSADC to 2000 summary data in NHGIS.
Amazing–thank you so much!! I will get to work on this.