미국 행정구역 단위 (County, Census Tract, Block Group, Block)

 

• Counties and equivalent areas are the primary divisions of most states, Puerto Rico, and the Island Areas. They include counties in 48 states; parishes in Louisiana; boroughs and census areas in Alaska; municipios in Puerto Rico; independent cities in Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia; and other entities in the Island Areas.

 

• Minor Civil Divisions (MCDs)/Census County Divisions (CCDs) MCDs are legally defined county subdivisions, such as towns and townships. In 21 states where MCDs do not exist or are not adequate for reporting subcounty statistics, the Census Bureau, in cooperation with state and local officials, delineates county subdivisions known as Census County Divisions.

 

• Places are concentrations of population such as cities, that have legally prescribed boundaries, powers, and functions. Other population centers without legally defined corporate limits or corporate powers are defined by the Census Bureau in cooperation with state officials and local data users. These are called Census-Designated Places (CDPs) and are identified in data tables by the acronym CDP following the place name.

 

• Census tracts generally contain between 1,000 and 8,000 people with an optimum size of 4,000 people. Census tract boundaries are delineated with the intention of being stable over many decades, so they generally follow relatively permanent visible features. However, they may follow governmental unit boundaries and other invisible features in some instances; the boundary of a state or county is always a census tract boundary. Block Numbering Areas (BNAs) are now called census tracts. Census tracts are probably the most commonly-used geography by statisticians and policymakers.

 

• Block groups are statistical divisions of census tracts, and generally contain between 600 and 3,000 people. They are a collection of census blocks within a census tract, sharing the same first digit of their four-digit identifying numbers.

 

• Blocks are statistical areas bounded by visible features, such as streets, roads, streams, and railroad tracks, and by nonvisible boundaries, such as selected property lines and city, township, school district, and county limits and short line-of-sight extensions of streets and roads.

 

출처: https://pitt.libguides.com/uscensus/understandinggeography

Guides: United States Census Information @ Pitt: Understanding Census Geography