Glossary of Data Terms

Definitions

Age

- The age classification is based on the age of the person as of April 1 in the census year.

Aggregate

- Term for the total amount of something. For example, the Aggregate Households calculates the total number of households within a specified area.

Aggregation

- A process of grouping unique data.

American Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut

- Includes persons who classified themselves as such in one of the specific race categories identified below.

American Indian

- Includes persons who indicated their race as "American Indian", entered the name of an Indian tribe, or reported such entries as Canadian Indian, French-American Indian, or Spanish-American Indian.

Eskimo

- Includes persons who indicated their race as "Eskimo" or reported entries such as Arctic Slope, Inupiat, and Yupik

Aleut

- Includes persons who indicated their race as "Aleut" or reported entries such as Alutiiq, Egegik, and Pribilovian

American Indian Reservation

- American Indian entity with boundaries established by treaty, statute, and/or executive or court order in the US. Federal and individual state governments established reservations as territory over which American Indians have governmental jurisdiction. These entities are designated as colonies, communities, pueblos, rancherias, reservations, and reserves. The Federally recognized reservations, their names, and their boundaries are identified for the US Census Bureau by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), an agency in the U.S. Department of the Interior; state governments identify the names and boundaries of state reservations.

American Indian Trust Land

- Land held in trust by the Federal government for either a tribe (tribal trust land) or an individual member of that tribe (individual trust land. Such land always is associated with a specific Federally recognized reservation or tribe, but may be located on or off the reservation. The Census Bureau recognizes and tabulates data separately only for off-reservation trust lands. The BIA identifies and provides maps of these areas for use by the Census Bureau.

Area

- The size, in square miles, recorded for each geographic entity. Square miles may be multiplied by 2.59 to convert an area measurement to square kilometers. Land Area was calculated by the Census Bureau from the specific set of boundaries recorded for each entity in its geographic data base. ZIP Code area is calculated by Geographic Data Technology, Inc.

The reliability of any area measurement figure is limited by the inaccuracy inherent in (1) the location and shape of the various boundary features in the data base, and (2) rounding affecting the last digit in all operations that compute and/or sum the area measurements.

Asian

- Refers to people having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent. It includes people who indicated their race or races as "Asian Indian", "Chinese", "Filipino", "Korean", "Japanese", "Vietnamese", or "Other Asian", or wrote in entries such as Burmese, Hmong, Pakistani, or Thai.

Average

- The number found by dividing the sum of all quantities by the total number of quantities. For example, Aggregate Income divided by Total Households equals Average Household Income.

Average Income of Households

- Includes the income of the householder and all other persons 15 years and over in the household, whether related to the householder or not. Because many households consists of only one person, average household income is usually less than average family income.

Average Household Income

- The average or mean income is obtained by dividing total household income by the total number of households. Because the average is influenced strongly by extreme values in the distribution, it is especially susceptible to the effects of sampling variability.

Average Household Size

- Average household size is calculated by dividing the number of persons in households by the number of households.

Black or African American

- Refers to people having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicated their race or races as "Black, African Am., or Negro", or wrote in entries such as African American, Afro American, Nigerian, or Haitian.

CCDs

- Census county divisions (CCDs) are county subdivisions that were delineated by the U.S. Census Bureau, in cooperation with state and local officials for purposes of presenting statistical data. CCDs have been established in 21 states where there are no legally established minor civil divisions (MCDs), where the MCDs do not have governmental or administrative purposes, where the boundaries of the MCDs change frequently, and/or where the MCDs generally are not known to the public. CCDs have no legal functions and are not governmental units.

Census Block

- The smallest geographical area, bounded by visible boundaries, for which census data are collected. Census blocks make up census block groups that make up census tracts.

Census Block Group

- Subdivisions of census tracts, each generally contain between 600 and 3000 people, with an optimum size of 1,500 people.

Census Tract

- A small, permanent subdivision of a county with homogeneous population characteristics, status and living conditions.

Centroid

- The center of a map object.

Child

- A son or a daughter by birth, an adopted child, or a stepchild, regardless of the child's age or marital status.

Children

-The term "children", as used in tables on living arrangements of children under 18, are all persons under 18 years, excluding people who maintain households, families or sub-families as a reference person or spouse.

Own Children

- in a family are sons and daughters, including stepchildren and adopted children, of the householder.

Related Children

- in a family include own children and all other children under 18 years old in the household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption.

Citizenship status

- There are five categories of citizenship status: 1) Born in the United States; 2) Born in Puerto Rico or another outlying area of the U.S.; 3) Born abroad of U.S. citizen parents; 4) Naturalized citizens; 5) Non-citizens.

Citizen

- People who indicate that they were born in the United States, Puerto Rico, a U.S. Island Area, or abroad of a U.S. citizen parent(s) are citizens. People who indicate that they are U.S. citizens through naturalization are also citizens. Naturalized citizens are foreign-born people who identify themselves as naturalized. (Naturalization is the conferring, by any means, of citizenship upon a person after birth.)

Not a citizen

- People who indicate they are not U.S. citizens.

City

- Type of incorporated place in 49 states and the District of Columbia. In 23 states and the District of Columbia, some or all cities are not part of any Minor Civil Division (MCD), and the Census Bureau also treats these as county subdivisions, statistically equivalent to MCDs.

Class of worker

- All people over the age of 15 who have been employed at any time are asked to designate the type of work normally done or the work performed most regularly. Occupations and types of work are then broken down into the following classes.

Private Wage and Salary Workers

- Includes people who worked for wages, salary, commission, tips, pay-in-kind, or piece rates for a private-for-profit employer or a private-not-for-profit, tax-exempt, or charitable organization. Self-employed people whose business was incorporated are included with private wage and salary workers because they are paid employees of their own companies. Some tabulations present data separately for these subcategories: "For profit", "Not-for-profit", and "Own business incorporated".

Government Workers

- Includes people who are employees of any local, state, or federal governmental unit, regardless of the activity of the particular agency. For some tabulations, the data are presented separately for the three levels of government. Employees of foreign governments, the United Nations, or other formal international organizations controlled by governments should be classified as "Federal Government employee".

Self-Employed Workers

- Includes people who worked for profit or fees in their own unincorporated business, profession, or trade, or who operated a farm.

Unpaid Family Workers

- Includes people who worked 15 hours or more without pay in a business or on a farm operated by a relative.

Salaried/Self-Employed

- In tabulations that categorize persons as either salaried or self-employed, the salaried category includes private and government wage and salary workers; self-employed includes self-employed people and unpaid family workers.

Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA)

- Geographic entity defined by the Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for use by Federal statistical agencies in the US. An area becomes a CMSA if it meets the requirements to qualify as a metropolitan statistical area (MSA), has a population of 1,000,000 or more, if component parts are recognized as primary metropolitan statistical areas (PMSAs), and local opinion favors the designation. Whole counties are components of CMSAs outside of New England, where they are composed of cities and towns instead.

Coordinate

- A set of numbers that designate location in a given reference system, such as x,y in a planar coordinate system or an x,y,z in a three dimensional coordinate system. Coordinates represent locations on the Earth's surface relative to other locations.

Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA)

- The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reviewed the Metropolitan Area standards in 1999 and 2000. The new standards replace the current metropolitan area classification with a Core-Based Statistical Area (CBSA) classification. The new Core-Based Statistical Area (CBSA) consists of a county containing an Incorporated Place or Census Designated Place with a population of at least 10,000 along any adjacent counties that have at lease 25% of employed residents of the county who work in the CBSAs core or central county. CBSAs are categorized as being either Metropolitan (core population of at least 50,000) or Micropolitan (core population between 10,000 and 50,000). This allows common statistics to be collected for less urban areas of the nation. These two county-based CBSA definitions will cover approximately 90% of the U.S. population.

County

- The primary political administrative subdivision of a state, the county is widely used for marketing purposes for the following reasons: 1) The range and reliability of currently available data below the state level is greatest at the county level. 2) County geographic boundaries are rarely altered. 3) Complete national coverage is achieved by summarizing all counties. 4) County boundaries are readily identifiable.

For Louisiana, parishes are used in lieu of counties; for Alaska, boroughs and census areas. The District of Columbia is treated as a single county unit. In Virginia, all cities are by law independent of counties; therefore they are treated as county units. The cities of Baltimore, MD, St. Louis, MO and Carson City, NV are also independent and therefore classified as counties.

Density

- Population divided by the county's square miles of land area. A simple basis for relating population to a county's size. Thus, two counties with the same population can have sharply divergent densities because of difference in land area. The figure may suffer because the land area will include railroad freight yards, wildlife preserves, industrial parks and other nonresidential areas, resulting in a misleading density level.

Designated Market Area (DMA)

- The formal term for what is more commonly known as a TV or broadcast market. Definitions for DMA's are supplied by Nielsen Media Research that generates ratings for broadcast programming. DMA's are selected by totaling the viewer hours of TV stations whose signals reach a particular county with total hours, then converted to a percentage share of all viewing hours. DMA's are named for the market of origin of the station(s) with the largest share of viewer hours, and all counties whose largest viewer share is given to stations in that same market of origin are grouped together under that DMA.

NOTE: Because of the reach of broadcast signals, DMA's don't always conform to whole-county geography like metro markets or newspaper markets. In certain cases, Nielsen splits counties, treating each portion as if it were a separate county. Each county, or portion thereof, is allocated to a single DMA, eliminating any geographic overlap. DMA's cover the whole U.S., except for parts of Alaska.

Disposable Income

- Income available for saving or spending after taxes.

Earnings

- Earnings is defined as the algebraic sum of wage or salary income and net income from self-employment. Earnings represent the amount of income received regularly before deductions for personal income taxes, Social Security, bond purchases, union dues, Medicare deductions, etc.

Educational attainment (25+)

- Refers to the highest level of education completed in terms of the highest degree or the highest level of schooling completed. This includes designations such as Less than Grade 9, Grade 9-12, High School Graduate, Some College-No Degree, Associate Degree, Bachelor's Degree, and Graduate Degree.

Employed

- Employed includes all civilians 16 years old and over who were either (1) "at work" -- those who did any work at all during the reference week as paid employees, worked in their own business or profession, worked on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers on a family farm or in a family business; or (2) were "with a job but not at work" -- those who did not work during the reference week but had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent due to illness, bad weather, industrial dispute, vacation, or other personal reasons. Excluded from the employed are people whose only activity consisted of work around the house or unpaid volunteer work for religious, charitable, and similar organizations; also excluded are people on active duty in the United States Armed Forces. The reference week is the calendar week preceding the date on which the respondents completed their questionnaires or were interviewed. This week may not be the same for all respondents.

Ethnicity

- In general, the Census Bureau defines ethnicity or origin as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person 's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify their origin as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race.

According to the revised Office of Management and Budget standards, race is considered a separate concept from Hispanic origin (ethnicity) and, wherever possible, separate questions should be asked on each concept.

Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) Code

- FIPS codes are assigned for a variety of geographic entities, including American Indian and Alaska Native area, congressional district, county, county subdivision, metropolitan area, place, and state.

The objective of the FIPS code is to improve the use of data and avoid unnecessary duplication and incompatibilities in the collection, processing, and dissemination of data.

Foreign born

Foreign-born population

- People who are not U.S. citizens at birth.

Native population

- People born in either the United States, Puerto Rico, or a U.S. Island Area such as Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands, or people born in a foreign country to a U.S. citizen parent(s).

Gender

- Male and Female population totals.

Geocoding

- Geocoding is the process of assigning to a street address a latitude and longitude coordinate and/or geographic codes that associate an address to census geography-such as a block group, census tract, or county.

GIS

- Geographic Information System. A computer software system with which spatial information may be captured, stored, analyzed, displayed and retrieved.

Group quarters (GQ)

- The Census Bureau classifies all people not living in households as living in group quarters. There are two types of group quarters: institutional (for example, correctional facilities, nursing homes, and mental hospitals) and non-institutional (for example, college dormitories, military barracks, group homes, missions, and shelters).

Group quarters population

- Those people residing in group quarters as of the date on which a particular survey was conducted. The Census Bureau recognizes two general categories of people in group quarters:

Institutionalized population

- The institutionalized population includes people under formally authorized supervised care or custody in institutions at the time of enumeration. Such people are classified as "patients or inmates" of an institution regardless of the availability of nursing or medical care, the length of stay, or the number of people in the institution. Generally, the institutionalized population is restricted to the institutional buildings and grounds (or must have passes or escorts to leave) and thus have limited interaction with the surrounding community. Also, they are generally under the care of trained staff who have responsibility for their safekeeping and supervision.

Non-institutionalized population

- The non-institutionalized population includes all people who live in group quarters other than institutions. Some examples of these types of group quarters may be college dormitories, rooming houses, religious group homes, communes, and halfway houses.

Hispanic Origin

- The OMB defines Hispanic or Latino as "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race." In data collection and presentation, federal agencies are required to use a minimum of two ethnicities: "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino." For Census 2000, the questions on race and Hispanic origin were asked of every individual living in the United States. The question on Hispanic origin asked respondents if they were Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino based on self-identification.

Household

- A household consists of all the people occupying a single housing unit under the 2000 Census rules. A housing unit is defined as a house, apartment, mobile home, group of rooms, or a single room that is occupied. In addition, the members of a household need not be related, and a single person living alone in a housing unit is also considered a household.

Family household (Family)

- A family includes a householder and one or more people living in the same household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption. All people in a household who are related to the householder are regarded as members of his or her family. A family household may contain people not related to the householder, but those people are not included as part of the householder's family in census tabulations. Thus, the number of family households is equal to the number of families, but family households may include more members than do families. A household can contain only one family for purposes of census tabulations. Not all households contain families since a household may comprise a group of unrelated people or one person living alone.

Non-family household

- a household containing a group of unrelated people or one person living alone.

Persons who are not counted as members of households comprise those living in group quarters such as college dormitories, military barracks, rooming houses, long-term-care hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons.

Household Population

- Total Household Population is a head count estimate of all people living in a given geographic area as of January 1, 1997 minus people living in group quarters, such as colleges, hospitals, institutions, and nursing homes, as well as armed forces personnel permanently assigned to the area.

Household size

- The total number of people living in a housing unit.

Household type and relationship

- Households are classified by type according to the sex of the householder and the presence of relatives. Examples include: married-couple family; male householder, no wife present; female householder, no husband present; spouse (husband/wife); child; and other relatives.

Householder

- The person, or one of the people, in whose name the home is owned, being bought, or rented. If there is no such person present, any household member 15 years old and over can serve as the householder for the purposes of the census.

Two types of householders are distinguished: a family householder and a non-family householder. A family householder is a householder living with one or more people related to him or her by birth, marriage, or adoption. The householder and all people in the household related to him are family members. A non-family householder is a householder living alone or with non-relatives only.

Housing unit

- A house, an apartment, a mobile home or trailer, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied as separate living quarters, or if vacant, intended for occupancy as separate living quarters. Separate living quarters are those in which the occupants live separately from any other individuals in the building and which have direct access from outside the building or through a common hall. For vacant units, the criteria of separateness and direct access are applied to the intended occupants whenever possible.

Income

- Income is the aggregate of wages and salaries, net farm and nonfarm self-employment income, interest, dividends, net rental and royalty income, Social Security and railroad retirement income, other retirement and disability income, public assistance income, unemployment compensation, Veterans Administration payments, alimony and child support, military family allotments, net winnings from gambling, and other periodic income.

Receipts from the following sources are not included as money income: money received from the sale of property (unless the recipient is engaged in the business of selling property); the value of income 'in kind' from food stamps, public housing subsidies, medical care, employer contributions for persons, etc.; withdrawal of bank deposits; money borrowed; tax refunds; exchange of money between relatives living in the same household; gifts and lump-sum inheritances, insurance payments, and other types of lump-sum receipts.

Income of Households

- Includes the income of the householder and all other persons 15 years old and over in the household, whether related to the householder or not. Because many households consist of only one person, average household income is usually less than average family income.

Index

- An index is a method comparing the value of a demographic variable for a selected geography to a base geography. The mathematical equation is; the value of a selected demographic variable divided by the geography base multiplied by 100. It is important to note some variables aren't indexable; for example, Population. Indexable variables are calculated variables - Averages, Medians and Percents.

Industry (population data)

- Information on industry relates to the kind of business conducted by a person's employing organization. For employed people the data refer to the person's job during the reference week. For those who worked at two or more jobs, the data refer to the job at which the person worked the greatest number of hours. Some examples of industrial groups shown in products include agriculture, forestry, and fisheries; construction; manufacturing; wholesale or retail trade; transportation and communication; personal, professional and entertainment services; and public administration.

Layer

- Basic element of a map. A map typically consists of several superimposed layers. Each map layer refers to one specific table of information.

Latitude

- Used to describe the North-South position of a point as measured usually in degrees or decimal degrees above or below the equator. Latitude lines are the horizontal lines on a map that increase form 0 degrees at the Equator to 90 degrees at both the North (+90.0 degrees) and South (-90.0 degrees) poles.

Legend

- The reference area on a map that lists and explains the colors, symbols, line patterns, shadings, and annotations used on the map. The legend often includes the scale, origin, orientation, and other map information.

Longitude

- Used to describe the East-West position of a point. The position is reported as the number of degrees east (to -180.0 degrees) or west (to +180.0 degrees) of the prime meridian (0 degrees). Represented by vertical lines running from the North to South poles. Lines of longitude are farthest apart at the Equator and intersect at both poles, and therefore, are not parallel.

MCDs

- Minor civil divisions (MCDs) are the primary governmental or administrative divisions of a county or county equivalent in many states. MCDs represent many different kinds of legal entities with a wide variety of governmental and/or administrative functions. MCDs are variously designated as American Indian reservations, assessment districts, boroughs, charter townships, election districts, election precincts, gores, grants, locations, magisterial districts, parish governing authority districts, plantations, precincts, purchases, road districts, supervisor's districts, towns, and townships.

Marital Status

- Adults are generally classified by marital status as being married, never married, separated, divorced or widowed.

Media Market

- See Designated Market Area.

Median

- A calculated value that divides the distribution in an area into two equal parts. One half falls above the value and one half falls below. For example, if the median age is 21, half the population is younger than 21 and the other half is older than 21.

Median Age

- This measure divides the age distribution into two equal parts: one half of the cases falling below the median value and one-half above the value.

Median Income

- The median represents the middle of the income, dividing the income distribution into two equal parts, one having income above the median and the other having income below the median.

Metropolitan Statistical Area

- A geographic area with a significant population nucleus, along with any adjacent communities that have a high degree of economic and social integration with that nucleus.

Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander

- Refers to people having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands. It includes people who indicated their race or races as "Native Hawaiian", "Guamanian or Chamorro", "Samoan", or "Other Pacific Islander", or wrote in entries such as Tahitian, Mariana Islander, or Chuukese.

New England County Metropolitan Area (NECMA)

- The U.S. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a division of the government's Office of Management and Budget, designates these alternative areas, composed of whole counties, in the six New England states for use with data not available below the county level. A NECMA includes, in addition to the county containing the principal central city of an MSA, any other county with at least half its population in that MSA.

Occupation

- Occupation describes the kind of work the person does on the job. For employed people, the data refer to the person's job during the reference week. For those who worked at two or more jobs, the data refer to the job at which the person worked the greatest number of hours. Some examples of occupational groups shown in this product include managerial occupations; business and financial specialists; scientists and technicians; entertainment; healthcare; food service; personal services; sales; office and administrative support; farming; maintenance and repair; and production workers.

Occupied Housing Unit

- A housing unit is classified as occupied if it is the usual place of residence of the person or group of people living in it at the time of enumeration.

Other Race

- Includes all other persons not included in the White, Black, American Indian, Eskimo or Aleut and Asian or Pacific Islander race categories. Persons reporting in the "Other Race" category and providing write-in entries such as multiracial, multiethnic, mixed, interracial, Wesort, or a Spanish/Hispanic origin group (such as Mexican, Cuban, or Puerto Rican) are included here.

Owner-occupied housing unit

- A housing unit is owner occupied if the owner or co-owner lives in the unit even if it is mortgaged or not fully paid for.

Pacific Islander

- Includes persons who indicated their race as "Pacific Islander" or reported entries such as: Hawaiian, Samoan, Guamanian, Other Pacific Islander.

Per Capita Income

- Average obtained by dividing Total Income by Total Population.

Percent Change in Population

- The percent change between April 1, 2000 (Census) and the current year's estimate or the percent change between the current's year's estimate and the projected five year estimate.

Place

- A concentration of population either legally bounded as an incorporated place, or identified as a Census Designated Place (CDP). Incorporated places have legal descriptions of borough (except in Alaska and New York), city, town (except in New England, New York, and Wisconsin), or village.

Population

- Updated from the 2000 Census of Population and Housing, total Population is a head count estimate of all people living in a given geographic area. It includes people living in group quarters, such as colleges, hospitals, institutions, and nursing homes, as well as armed forces personnel permanently assigned to the area.

Population By Age and Sex

- Male and female population totals for 11 age groups are useful for marketers who seek to aim their products or services at specific sales targets. For example, the 12- to 17-year-old population is a favorite target of those marketing soft drinks and compact disks. Several of the age groups are also associated with lifestyle stages such as the preschoolers (0-5 years), teenagers (12-17 years), and young adults (18-24 years), which are critical to the formulation of marketing strategies.

Population Per Square Mile

- (See Density.)

Poverty

- Following the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB's) Directive 14, the Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to detect who is poor. If the total income for a family or unrelated individual falls below the relevant poverty threshold, then the family or unrelated individual is classified as being "below the poverty level".

Race

- Race is a self-identification data item in which respondents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify. People who felt they fell into none of those categories could choose the "other" option, or they could indicate a combination of more than one race. These categories differ from 1990 principally because Asian has become a separate category and because multiple races was not an option 10 years ago. Note that The Census Bureau considers "Hispanic" an ethnicity, not a race. Anyone who selected a race on their 2000 Census forms also reported whether they were Hispanic or non-Hispanic.

The racial categories of the 2000 census (before modification) are provided below:

• White
• Black or African American
• American Indian and Alaska Native
• Asian
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
• Some Other Race Alone
• Two or More Races

Ratio

- This is a measure of the relative size of one number to a second number expressed as the quotient of the first number divided by the second.

Region

- An enclosed area defined by one or more polygons. If a region contains one or more lakes or islands, each lake or island is a separate polygon.

Renter-occupied housing unit

- All occupied units which are not owner occupied, whether they are rented for cash rent or occupied without payment of cash rent, are classified as renter-occupied.

Rural

- Territory, population and housing units not classified as urban. "Rural" classification cuts across other hierarchies and can be in metropolitan or non-metropolitan areas.

School enrollment

- Enrollment of individuatls age 3 years and older in regular school, either public or private, which includes nursery school, kindergarten, elementary school, and schooling which leads to a high school diploma or college degree.

Secondary Individuals

- Secondary individuals are people of any age who reside in a household, but are not related to the householder (except unrelated subfamily members). People who reside in group quarters are also secondary individuals. Examples of a secondary individual include (1) a guest, partner, roommate, or resident employee; (2) a foster child; or (3) a person residing in a rooming house, a halfway house, staff quarters at a hospital, or other type of group quarters. Secondary individuals are people of any age who reside in a household, but are not related to the householder (except unrelated subfamily members). People who reside in group quarters are also secondary individuals. Examples of a secondary individual include (1) a guest, partner, roommate, or resident employee; (2) a foster child; or (3) a person residing in a rooming house, a halfway house, staff quarters at a hospital, or other type of group quarters.

Sex

- An individual's gender classification - male or female.

Some Other Race

- Was included in Census 2000 for respondents who were unable to identify with the five Office of Management and Budget race categories. Respondents who provided write-in entries such as Moroccan, South African, Belizean, or a Hispanic origin (for example, Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban) are included in the Some other race category.

Source

- The company which created the data.

Spanish/Hispanic/Latino

- A self-designated classification for people whose origins are from Spain, the Spanish-speaking countries of Central or South America, the Caribbean, or those identifying themselves generally as Spanish, Spanish-American, etc. Origin can be viewed as ancestry, nationality, or country of birth of the person or person's parents or ancestors prior to their arrival in the United States.

Note: Spanish/Hispanic/Latino people may be of any race.

Spouse

- A person legally married to another person.

State (and equivalent entity)

- The primary legal subdivision of the United States. The District of Columbia (Washington, DC) is treated as the statistical equivalent of a state for census purposes.

State Code

- A two-digit FIPS code assigned by the NIST to identify each State and statistically equivalent entity. The NIST assigns the codes based on the alphabetic sequence of State names (Puerto Rico and the Outlying Areas appear at the end); it documents these codes in a FIPS publication (FIPS PUB 5). Also, a two-digit code assigned by the Census Bureau to identify each State within its census geographic division (Puerto Rico and the Outlying Areas appear at the end).

Television Market

- See Designated Market Area (DMA).

Total Income

- The algebraic sum of the amounts reported separately for wage or salary income; net nonfarm self-employment income; net farm self-employment income; interest, dividend, or net rental or royalty income; Social Security or railroad retirement income, public assistance or welfare income; retirement or disability income; and all other income. See Income.

Thematic map

- A map that reveals the geographic patterns in statistical data.

Two or More Races

- The two or more races category represents all those respondents who reported more than one race. This included 57 possible combinations of the six race categories defined under "Race". The decision to use the instruction "mark one or more races" was reached by the Office of Management and Budget in 1997 after noting evidence of increasing numbers of children from interracial unions and the need to measure the increased diversity in the United States. Prior to this decision, most efforts to collect data on race (including those by the Census Bureau) asked people to report one race.

Unemployed

- All civilians 16 years old and over are classified as unemployed if they (1) were neither "at work" nor "with a job but not at work" during the reference week, and (2) were actively looking for work during the last 4 weeks, and (3) were available to accept a job. Also included as unemployed are civilians who did not work at all during the reference week, were waiting to be called back to a job from which they had been laid off, and were available for work except for temporary illness.

United States

- The 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Units in structure

- A structure is a separate building that either has open spaces on all sides or is separated from other structures by dividing walls that extend from ground to roof. In determining the number of units in a structure, all housing units, both occupied and vacant, are counted.

Unmarried

-partner household - Household in which the householder and his or her partner are not legally married or participating in a common law marriage.

Urban

- All territory, population and housing units in urbanized areas and in places of more than 2,500 persons outside of urbanized areas. "Urban" classification cuts across other hierarchies and can be in metropolitan or non-metropolitan areas.

Urban Area

- Collective term referring to all areas that are urban. For Census 2000, there are two types of urban areas: urban clusters and urbanized areas.

Urban Cluster

- A densely settled territory that has at least 2,500 people but fewer than 50,000. New for Census 2000.

Urbanized area

- (UA) An area consisting of a central place(s) and adjacent territory with a general population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile of land area that together have a minimum residential population of at least 50,000 people. The Census Bureau uses published criteria to determine the qualification and boundaries of UAs.

Vacancy Status

- Unoccupied housing units are considered vacant. Vacancy status is determined by the terms under which the unit may be occupied, e.g., for rent, for sale, or for seasonal use only.

Vacant housing unit

- A housing unit is vacant if no one is living in it at the time of enumeration, unless its occupants are only temporarily absent. Units temporarily occupied at the time of enumeration entirely by people who have a usual residence elsewhere are also classified as vacant.

Value

- Value is the respondent's estimate of how much the property (house and lot, mobile home and lot, or condominium unit) would sell for if it were for sale.

Veteran status

- A "civilian veteran" is a person 18 years old or over who has served (even for a short time), but is not now serving, on active duty in the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or the Coast Guard, or who served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II. People who served in the National Guard or military Reserves are classified as veterans only if they were ever called or ordered to active duty, not counting the 4-6 months for initial training or yearly summer camps. All other civilians 16 years old and over are classified as nonveterans.

Village

- A type of incorporated place in 20 states and American Samoa. The Census Bureau treats all villages in New Jersey, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, and some villages in Ohio as county subdivisions.

Vintage

- The date that the map or data was created or updated.

White

- Refers to people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicated their race or races as "White" or wrote in entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.

ZIP Code

- Administrative units established by the United States Postal Service (USPS) for the efficient distribution of mail. ZIP Codes generally do not respect political or census statistical area boundaries, nor do they usually have clearly identifiable boundaries. In addition, ZIP Codes often serve a continually changing area, are changed periodically to meet postal requirements and do not cover all the land area of the United States. The first three digits of the five-digit code identify a major city or sectional distribution center while the last two digits signify a specific post office delivery area or point.