Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2018 February 21
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February 21[edit]
Populations[edit]
Hello! I have a question I want to ask. Why doesn't the United States Census Bureau conduct population estimates for unincorporated communities in the United States? This excludes Census-designated places. Coloradodude19 (talk) 00:11, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
- It's an interesting question to research. The useless answer is that they're not required to. Why are they required to make estimates of incorporated areas? --jpgordon𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇 05:09, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
- It's impossible to conduct population estimates for unincorporated places without making them CDPs — if they're not designated, they can't have precise boundaries, so you wouldn't have a way to say what their population is. After all, CDPs are a Census Bureau creation, so they can (and do) relax the definitions if they decide that they ought to designate more places. Finally, note that a census block group can cover an entire community, or even a census block might, for a really tiny place; no need to designate them if they'll be studied comprehensively in another type of census geography. Nyttend (talk) 13:08, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
- But that's not the question, I don't think. The Census Bureau is required to provide postcensal estimates of incorporated areas. It does not do so for unincorporated areas, even CDPs. So, for example, there's no estimate of whether my CDP of Kernville, California has increased or decreased since 2010; so there's no way to know yet (by official estimates) if the population drop between 2000 and 2010 was a trend or a blip. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇 15:09, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
- It's impossible to conduct population estimates for unincorporated places without making them CDPs — if they're not designated, they can't have precise boundaries, so you wouldn't have a way to say what their population is. After all, CDPs are a Census Bureau creation, so they can (and do) relax the definitions if they decide that they ought to designate more places. Finally, note that a census block group can cover an entire community, or even a census block might, for a really tiny place; no need to designate them if they'll be studied comprehensively in another type of census geography. Nyttend (talk) 13:08, 21 February 2018 (UTC)