We love Google Earth because it puts the power to explore data in the hands of average folks. We’ve been exploring uses for census data and wanted to share some of this data with the world.
What you’re seeing here is a map of the counties in the United States colorized by median age. Lighter colors are older.
Census data is also available at the block group level which is much, much more detailed.
Without further ado, what follows are three sets of links for each state which allow you to explore population density, median age, and male/female ratio in each state at two levels of detail. Google Earth is required. We did have some ftp issues when uploading these files, so if you have any problems, let me know and I”ll re-upload the file.
Population Density
Lighter is higher population density (white is 800+ people per square mile), Dark is lower population density (black is 2 or fewer people per square mile)
Median Age
Lighter is older median age (white is 46.0 years median age), Dark is younger median age (black is 29.0 years median age)
Male/Female Ratio
Lighter means more men than women (white is 55% men), Dark means more women than men (black is 45% men)
If you want to know more about Google Earth, check out our Absolutely Google Earth a collection of tools and resources to get you started.
We’re working on a project to make this and other simple mapping applications more widely available. If you’re a python guru who is interested in building great mapping applications like Chicago Crime give me a jingle.