Exploring the U.S. Census gives social science students and researchers alike the tools to understand, extract, process, and analyze data from the decennial census, the American Community Survey, and other data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Donnelly′s text provides a thorough background on the data collection methods, structures, and potential pitfalls of the census for unfamiliar researchers, collecting information previously available only in widely disparate sources into one handy guide. Hands-on, applied exercises at the end of the chapters help readers dive into the data. Along the way, the author shows how best to analyze census data with open-source software and tools. Readers can freely evaluate the data on their own computers, in keeping with the free and open data provided by the Census Bureau. By placing the census in the context of the open data movement, this text makes the history and practice of the census relevant so readers can understand what a crucial resource the census is for research and knowledge.

Census data are widely used by practitioners to understand demographic change, allocate resources, address inequalities, and make sound business decisions. Until recently, projects using US Census data have required proficiency with multiple web interfaces and software platforms to prepare, map, and present data products. This book introduces readers to tools in the R programming language for accessing and analyzing Census data, helping analysts manage these types of projects in a single computing environment. Chapters in this book cover the following key topics: • Rapidly acquiring data from the decennial US Census and American Community Survey using R, then analyzing these datasets using tidyverse tools; • Visualizing US Census data with a wide range of methods including charts in ggplot2 as well as both static and interactive maps; • Using R as a geographic information system (GIS) to manage, analyze, and model spatial demographic data from the US Census; • Working with and modeling individual-level microdata from the American Community Survey’s PUMS datasets; • Applying these tools and workflows to the analysis of historical Census data, other US government datasets, and international Census data from countries like Canada, Brazil, Kenya, and Mexico. Kyle Walker is an associate professor of geography at Texas Christian University, director of TCU’s Center for Urban Studies, and a spatial data science consultant. His research focuses on demographic trends in the United States, demographic data visualization, and software tools for open spatial data science. He is the lead author of a number of R packages including tigris, tidycensus, and mapboxapi.

This open access book describes the differences in US census coverage, also referred to as “differential undercount”, by showing which groups have the highest net undercounts and which groups have the greatest undercount differentials, and discusses why such undercounts occur. In addition to focusing on measuring census coverage for several demographic characteristics, including age, gender, race, Hispanic origin status, and tenure, it also considers several of the main hard-to-count populations, such as immigrants, the homeless, the LBGT community, children in foster care, and the disabled. However, given the dearth of accurate undercount data for these groups, they are covered less comprehensively than those demographic groups for which there is reliable undercount data from the Census Bureau. This book is of interest to demographers, statisticians, survey methodologists, and all those interested in census coverage.

This book covers several dimensions of the undercount of young children in the U.S. Decennial Census, examines the data from the 2010 U.S. Decennial Census in detail and looks at trends in the undercount of children over time. Other aspects included are the geographic distribution of the net undercount and an exploration for some of the potential explanations for the high net undercount of children. The number of young children in the US is growing, but almost one million young children (under age 5) were missed in the 2010 U.S. Decennial Census. The net undercount of young children has been higher than any other age group for the past several decades and is increasing rapidly, but little attention has been paid to the issue but demographers or the public.