I have in my possession ESRI Demographic update data for multiple years: 2013/2018, 2014/2019, 2015/2020, 2016/2021, 2017/2022. I am currently trying to see if it is possible to compare each of these data sets against each other to ascertain potential customers for highspeed internet service in my county. For example, a time series analysis looking at population change using the total population estimates for each year. I have tried looking up this information on ESRI's website but I have not found anything that could help me answer my question, so I am hoping someone on the stack exchange with knowledge of ESRI Demographic Data could provide with one. If it is possible to do this, I am also considering using other variables too such as median household income, educational attainment, disposable income, age and other socioeconomic measures for marketing purposes.
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"I have tried looking up this information on ESRI's website but I have not found anything that could help me answer my question..." Is the question about finding data, or how to do the analysis? The answer to the first question is that this data was not created by ESRI, the data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau (which ESRI then repackages with their products because demographic data is a common dataset for use in GIS). So if you are looking for more/ complete data, the Census Bureau website is where you want to look.– RGfromRWBJVAug 28, 2019 at 20:11
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I am inquiring more about the possibility of using the population estimates to perform trend analysis. I am interested in using the population estimates for each year to see how they fluctuate over time. For example, lets say that I want examine population change from 2013 to 2017. I want to use the population totals for each year, but not the projected estimates. Can I use those initial totals for analysis and are they comparable to each other.– tjwashin234Aug 29, 2019 at 13:51
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The Census Bureau only conducts a complete census every 10 years (2010, 2020, etc.) I'm fairly certain anything between those years are based on estimates, however that doesn't necessarily preclude you from being able to perform trend analysis on the data. Here is a link to the documentation of how they produce these estimates: census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/technical-documentation/…– RGfromRWBJVAug 29, 2019 at 18:44
1 Answer
If you are only looking at a single county, I assume you're probably looking at Block Group or Tract level data? Since the number of records in your dataset should be relatively small, and you have all of the data available, I would just export your selected records from the most recent dataset to a local geodatabase.
If you are just looking at population, it would be easy to just add new columns for each year's population (pop2013, pop2014, etc) and just join your "previous years" tables to your master, calculate the new field from the joined field, and repeat until you have all of your previous year data in your master.
If you want to add in more fields, look at using the "Add Join" or "Join Field" tool and scripting the process via ArcPy/Python, where you can manage the naming conventions for adding fields and methods of joining/calculating the attributes from one source to the master.
