# Why does Wisconsin lack county subdivision data in 1980?
**URL:** https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-does-wisconsin-lack-county-subdivision-data-in-1980/5656
**Category:** NHGIS
**Created:** [February 5, 2024, 6:03pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-does-wisconsin-lack-county-subdivision-data-in-1980/5656 "2024-02-05T18:03:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@John\_Johnson](https://forum.ipums.org/u/John_Johnson)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2024, 6:03pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-does-wisconsin-lack-county-subdivision-data-in-1980/5656/1 "2024-02-05T18:03:51Z")
At least some tables lack county subdivision data for the state of Wisconsin in 1980. An example is table DD5 (“Sex by Marital Status by Age”). I was surprised by this because time series table A34 includes Wisconsin county subdivision information in both 1970 and 1990. Did the Census Bureau simply not publish a WI county subdivision breakdown of this table?
Other tables, including DS104 do include Wisconsin county subdivisions.
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### Author:  [@MPC\_vanriper](https://forum.ipums.org/u/MPC_vanriper)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2024, 8:38pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-does-wisconsin-lack-county-subdivision-data-in-1980/5656/2 "2024-02-05T20:38:52Z")
Dear John,
Thank you for reaching out! We’ve determined that we only have data for county subdivisions up through North Dakota in _ds106_ (1980 Census: STF 2b - 100% Detailed Data with Race/Ethnicity Breakdown). We are currently doing some digging into _why_ that’s the case, and we’ll update this forum post with more information as we find it.
Sincerely,
Dave Van Riper
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### Author:  [@John\_Johnson](https://forum.ipums.org/u/John_Johnson)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2024, 9:33pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-does-wisconsin-lack-county-subdivision-data-in-1980/5656/3 "2024-02-05T21:33:00Z")
Thanks for the quick response, Dave. I’m curious to hear what you learn. If this data is available, it’d certainly be of interest to me.
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### Author:  [@MPC\_vanriper](https://forum.ipums.org/u/MPC_vanriper)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2024, 7:12pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/why-does-wisconsin-lack-county-subdivision-data-in-1980/5656/4 "2024-02-06T19:12:40Z")
Dear John,
Based on my investigation, we only have county subdivision data up through North Dakota in _ds106_ (1980 Census: STF 2b - 100% Detailed Data with Race/Ethnicity Breakdown) and _ds111_ (1980 Census: STF 4Pb - Sample-Based Detailed Population Data with Race/Ethnicity Breakdown). I looked back at some archived version of NHGIS data, and it appears as if we’ve been missing county subdivision for Ohio - Wyoming in those datasets for a long time!
Unfortunately, it is a big undertaking to add these missing states to those particular data files. If you’re interested, you can actually download the [1980 STF2 state files](https://www2.census.gov/census_1980/stf2b/) from the Census Bureau’s FTP site. You could then use the [1980 STF2 technical document](https://assets.nhgis.org/original-data/modern-census/1980STF2.pdf) to write custom code to extract the data you need. The 1980 STF files have multiple physical records for each “logical record” (e.g., data for a single county subdivision in Wisconsin). Unfortunately, that makes the programming more complicated.
I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you!
Sincerely,
Dave Van Riper