NHGIS: How do I match FIPS Place codes to 1970/1980 Census Place Codes?

NHGIS
1

IPUMS NHGIS tables in question:

  • NT20 (1970 Population of Places, by Race)

  • NT7 (1970 Population of Places, by Race)

  • NP6 (1970 Population of Places, by Race)

I’m aiming to build a time series of US Census Places by population, for which NHGIS offers data as far back as 1970. However, the 1970 and 1980 data do not have FIPS Place codes (2-digit state code + 5-digit Place code), rather they have something called Census Place Codes (2-digit state codes + 4-digit Place codes), for which there is not a lot of documentation online.

Where can I find a crosswalk that would allow me to identfy Places across these two systems?

Thank you in advance.

2

I am not aware of any sort of crosswalk available for the various coding schemes of Census places over time. However, as long as I am understanding what you are doing correctly, I think IPUMS NHGIS already has a time-series table of race within places. If you choose the “Place” geographic level and the “Race” Topic filter, you should see many available source tables. The middle tab under Select Data lists the available time-series tables that fit the criteria. One very popular table counts the number of people by race within Census places from 1970 through 2010.

3

I realize this is likely too late for your needs, but since I came across this forum post in 2020, I figured I’d respond for future searchers. Here’s a crosswalk from Census: https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/PREVGENZ/pl/us_places.txt

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