Census Tract Definition
The United States Census Bureau divides counties into small subdivisions called census tracts. Though adjustments are occasionally made to boundaries, tracts are designed to be permanent to better understand demographic changes within them from one census to another, which are separated by ten years.
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History
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The Census Bureau created the first census tracts in 1910 for a limited number of large cities. By 2000, there were thousands of census tracts, covering the entire country for the first time.
Rationale
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Census tracts are designed to delineate areas whose populations are fairly homogeneous in certain ways, such as income level or housing stock. By focusing on a geographic unit, a detailed statistical comparisons can be made to previous census data to see how the national population is changing over the years.
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Location and Size
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Metropolitan areas and populated places outside of metro areas are divided into census tracts; however, a tract does not incorporate more than one county. Some tracts are quite small, because they cover densely populated parts of cities, while others are much larger.
Ideal Population
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Policy specifies that an optimum census tract population is 4,000 people, though as few as 2,500 or as many as 8,000 are acceptable. Tracts that cover places such as prisons, military bases or colleges must have at least 1,000 people.
Usefulness
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Census tracts have proved their usefulness over the last 100 years, and continue to be important for geographical information, data tabulation, boundary continuity and comparability over time.
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