Cornell PAD Trend Data: Building Upon the Release of IRS Records

The Cornell Program of Applied Demographics (PAD) has recently folded in the IRS records cited in my last post on their Trends page.

The PAD Trends page presents recent demographic and economic county trends. The data presented is collected from a variety of sources. The trends (variables) are organized in chapters and sub-chapters. Each trend has a little sparkline that quickly gives a glance at the recent trend. More detail, including the numbers are also available.

To use their page:

• Select a county (or the state as a whole) using the drop down menu.
• The bottom grey bar has some additional menu items:
• Trends that have to do with dollar amounts can be displayed unadjusted for inflation (Current $) or adjusted for inflation (Constant 2000 $)
• "Export to Excel" will create a Microsoft Excel file with the data from selected variables.
• "Analyze" will open a new window with larger graphs. This page allows for some basic computations between variables. Trends for multiple variables are combined when possible (based on the dimension of the variable)
• "Map" will open a new window with a coloured county map that shows differences beween counties for selected variables. There will be a drop down box with the variables selected.
• The chapters are listed on the left and assist in scrolling through the available trends.
• The chapters and sub-chapters can be collapsed and expanded by clicking on the little double arrows or on the chapter title.
• If you move your mouse over a sparkline, an enlarged chart with axes information will pop-up.
• Click on the details button to see an enlarged chart and a table. There will also be a reference to the data source.
• You can select/unselect variables for further analyses by clicking on the little box in front of the variable name.

Further explanation of a variable can be found by clicking on the name of the variable (not available for all variables).

Population Flows from Cities and Villages to Towns

One of the great "truths" of demographics in the past 50 years has been the outflow of people from cities and villages to more rural settings. In a phrase, it's referred to as "urban flight".

Oneida County has seen considerable evidence of this in census data. The table below shows the change in population for cities, villages and remainders of towns (ROTs)from 1960 until the most recent census in 2010. ROTs are basically the town populations minus the village populations.

As you can see, since the 1960 census, the cities in Oneida County have experienced a decline of more than a third (36%) of their population. Villages, while not losing nearly as great a percentage, have lost more than a tenth (13%). ROTs on the other hand have seen their populations increase by about 34% ! This despite an over all loss of population for the county as a whole since 1970.

As a result, town populations (that is to say the populations in the parts of towns NOT in villages) now exceeds city populations in the county, and has done so since the year 2000. While approximately 99,000 people now live in one of the three cities in Oneida County, nearly 110,000 live in the non-village portions of its towns.

Interestingly, the number of people (population = 109,197) living in the ROTs has remained the same since the Census 2000. And by the same I mean EXACTLY the same ! Could this be a sign of a change in this trend ? With no real way to know, we will have to wait for another 8 years until the 2020 census to get a better view of where this trend is heading locally.