Economics

Department of Economics
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5330 USA
(269) 387-5535

U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts

OVERVIEW

U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts is a data tool providing census statistics for all 50 states (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) and counties, and for cities and towns with more than 5,000 people as well. These statistics are categorized into 14 topics such as population, age and sex, housing, education, health, ect. This tool also provides different views for the data: tables, maps, charts, and dashboards, which shows all the three views at once.

*This description is a paraphrased version of the description on the U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts website.

Available data file formats

CSV

Accessibility

This is an open data source that is for public use.

HOW TO RETRIEVE DATA BY EXAMPLE

Scenario

Suppose you want to find out, among people older than 25, what percent has at least a Bachelor’s degree in the following counties in Michigan: Bay County, Clinton County, Kalamazoo County, and Oakland County. You want to obtain the newest data available.

Step-by-step

  • Locate the data source. Go to . There is a search bar on the left, where you can search any state, county, city or town of interest with its name or zip code. On the right of the search bar, you can Select a fact or topic of your choice.

Screenshot of the U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts main page. There is a search bar on the left and a filter on its right. And more options are available on the right. A default table is shown below.

  • Search your topic and track the searching results. Type Bay County in the search bar, and select Bay County, Michigan from the drop-down menu. Then in Select a fact, choose topic Education from its drop-down menu as your topic is related to education. Under Education, click on “Bachelor’s degree or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2013-2017”, which exactly matches your topic. The result appears to the left of the data for the United States.  If you wish to remove the aggregated data for the United States, you can click on the cross box in the United States column.

Screenshot similar to the image above except that the default table changes into a table showing only the variable “Bachelor’s degree or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2013-2017” for Bay County and the United States.

  • Finalize your data. Follow a similar searching process for Clinton County, Kalamazoo County, and Oakland County. Note that you do not have to Select a fact anymore once you did that for Bay County and your search results would be automatically added. The data are displayed in TABLE by default. You can change it to MAP, CHART or DASHBOARD located at the upper right corner of the screen for a different view.

Screenshot similar to the image above except that the table has more data on it. Specifically, the data of the other three counties of interest are included.

  • Download your data. In the top right corner of the screen, click on the MORE button and choose CSV from the drop-down menu. Now you have obtained the data in CVS form.

Screenshot similar to the image above except that the MORE button in the upper-right corner showing download options, CSV included as the second choice.

provides more details and guidance for using U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts.

Be sure to consult with the source website on how to properly cite your data. For this scenario, the citation in APA format would look something like:

U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts. (2019). Education Survey. U.S. Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts (Accessed on November 18, 2019)