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Geography Types

Our dataset includes the United States, all 51 states (including D.C.), approximately 4000 counties, 30,000 cities, 32,000 zip codes, and a little over 140,000 neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods

A neighborhood is typically referred to as a district within a town or city, usually covering a 10-mile radius. Neighborhoods differ across the US - some reference a few city blocks, while others cover a 10-mile radius. These are not census designated boundaries, though the statistics applied to each neighborhood are based on the American Community Survey results.

Cities

Our set of cities are equivalent to geographies denoted "places" by the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS). The census denotes places as areas of concentrated population including cities, towns or villages, and census designated places (CDP), which resemble cities, towns or villages, but lack their own government. The requirements for a CDP are a given name, local recognition, and geographic independence from another census designated place. They are primarily used for statistical purposes.

Zip Codes

We use zip codes denoted by the Census Bureau as opposed to the USPS. In fact, the zip codes presented by the Census are called Zip Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs), which are generalized representations of the USPS zip code boundaries, but aren't exactly the same. This is because zip code boundaries, as defined by the Postal Service, are altered frequently due to changing postal needs, as well as their tendency to cross state, city, and county boundaries, which make them statistically difficult to deal with. The ZCTAs, or the census zip code counterpart, are constructed by aggregating the most basic census geographic units, census blocks, by homes whose addresses use a given zip code.

Gender

For the sake of statistical significance, individuals were asked to identify as either male or female. In the cases where these did not apply, other characteristics were used to determine a person's gender such as first name or household relationships. If that was inconclusive, gender was randomly selected using a "hot deck" method.

Primary Language Spoken within Households

The five major buckets we have grouped languages into are English, Spanish, Asian, Indo-European and other. This is to help the user get a general feel for the location rather than a very detailed breakdown. If demand persists, we can provide information about the world's languages broken down into 39 categories.

English. This bucket is the smallest of the others as it only includes English. Spanish. This includes both Spanish and Spanish Creole. Asian. Languages encompassed by the Asian category include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mon Khmer Cambodian, Hmong, Thai, Laotian, Vietnamese, and other Asian languages. Indo-European. This is the broadest of the categories as it includes French and French Creole, Patois Cajun, Italian, German, Portuguese and Portuguese Creole,Yiddish, other West Germanic languages, Scandinavian languages (like Swedish and Norwegian), Greek, Russian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, other Slavic languages, Armenian, Persian, Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu, and other Indic languages. Other. Within the other language group are the Native American languages like Navajo and Cree, African languages like Swahili and Somali, as well as Hungarian, Arabic, and Hebrew.

Marital Status

Never Married. This classification includes those who have never entered a marriage as well as those whose first marriage was annulled. Now Married. This classification includes those who were married at the time of the survey and not separated from their spouses. It also includes common law marriages and live-in couples if they consider this the most appropriate category. Unfortunately, this does not include same-sex marriages even if the marriage was performed in a state where same-sex marriage is legal and marriage certificates were issued Separated. This classification includes those who are legally separated, or otherwise absent, from their spout due to marital discord. Additionally, those who have been deserted or parted because they do not want to live together but also do not want to divorce, are included. Widowed. This includes those who were widowed, and not remarried, at the time of the survey. Divorced. This includes people who are legally divorced with a final divorce decree. It is important to note that this does NOT account for everyone who has been divorced, just those divorced at the time of the survey.

Rent

This statistic refers to contract rent which is the monthly rent amount agreed to or contracted for. This does not include any furnishings, utilities, fees, meals, or services that may be included. Any rent for any additional living quarters or business premises was excluded. If the renter receives payment form any other members of the household for the total rent cost, the original contract rent, without any deductions, was reported.