ECON 146 De anza college Economics Housing Prices
Description
The goal of this decomposed project is to use the skills youve learned to investigate something about your neighborhood that you find interesting. You can either create a table using Census data or build a map using any data you can find. Along with your table or map, write one or two paragraphs describing what you find. Follow the writing style guidelines from Decomposed Project .
A suggestion is to think about the papers and topics that we have covered in class and try to apply something youve learned as you create your table or map. Can you tell me something about urban sprawl by looking at certain data? Or something about housing prices and poverty?
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ECON 146
Decomposed Project #2
Due February 3rd, 2022 at 5:00 PM
By the end of this portion of the project, you will build a table describing the income distribution of the
neighborhood (i.e. census tract) that you selected in Decomposed Projected #1. The instructions below
(and the lecture video from January 6th) show you how to build this table. You will also write a paragraph
that describes the data that you collect and present in a table.
Collecting data from the Census website: https://data.census.gov/cedsci/
You will use this website to find information on the income distribution of households in your census
tract, as well as the county and state in which your census tract is located.
Once you go to the website, type Income into the search bar. Choose Income (Households, Families,
Individuals).
The search will return a few options
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There are three options here: income, mean income and median income. Each one of these will
provide slightly different data. Lets choose the first one. A table that is labeled as S1901.
There are couple of things that arent what you want
o This reports income from the 2019 ACS. I want you to get data from the 2015 ACS 5year estimates.
o This reports income at the household-level, but also some other levels. We only want
household.
o This reports data for the entire country (you want the census tract, county and state).
Its easy to fix which dataset its from. Simply click the drop-down menu at the top of the page
and select 2015 ACS 5-year estimates
Its also easy to focus on the household income. You can click the Hide button and make
everything that isnt household-level data invisible. You can also make the Margin of Error
invisible. We wont be using that.
Finally, you need to focus on your census tract, so you should choose Geos and you can
navigate your way to your specific tract.
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o
First select Tract, then it will allow you go through the state and county to find your
specific tract. Once you do that, you can close the window and it should look like this.
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Next well want to get that data for the other two geographies. Go ahead and select Geos again
and navigate to the county. Then do the same thing for the state. I had to go back and hide some
columns again after I did that, but then it looked like this.
Now you need to get your data from the website to Excel. You can do that by copying and
pasting. Or you can download the data by clicking the Excel button. Once you download the
data, it looks something like this.
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So this isnt very nice looking. I suggest you delete the first two rows and everything below
Percent Imputed. Next I want you to center every column that isnt the far-left column. I also
cleaned up the titles so they arent so long and converted the format to numbers (to get rid of the
little green triangles). Now it looks something like shown below, I added in the borders around
each cell you can see it better.
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Total Households
Less than $10,000
$10,000 to $14,999
$15,000 to $24,999
$25,000 to $34,999
$35,000 to $49,999
$50,000 to $74,999
$75,000 to $99,999
$100,000 to $149,999
$150,000 to $199,999
$200,000 or more
Median income (dollars)
Mean income (dollars)
California
12,717,801
5.8%
5.1%
9.5%
8.9%
12.0%
16.7%
12.1%
15.0%
7.0%
7.9%
61,818
87,877
Santa Barbara County
142,713
5.1%
4.5%
8.8%
9.7%
11.9%
16.9%
12.7%
15.4%
7.1%
7.8%
63,985
89,903
Census Tract 29.30
2,897
9.5%
5.8%
5.7%
8.2%
6.7%
18.3%
14.5%
20.4%
3.8%
7.1%
71,078
83,729
Formatting your table
So now you have a table. Here are the formatting guidelines I want you to follow.
o I already did some work to make sure the formatting of the numbers looks good and are
consistent (commas present in every row, if necessary; same amount of numbers after
decimal points).
o Dont just have borders around every cell. You should have one line at the top, just under
titles of the columns and another line down at the bottom. Also indent the sub-categories
for the income distribution.
o Left column entries left-justified
o Other columns are center-justified
o I also like to use a nicer font than Calibri. Times New Roman is so much classier.
o Write a title for your table with a number that can be referred to in the text (i.e. Table 1).
o Write a caption for the title that describes the data in the table.
o Include sources or other useful information at the bottom of the table. I like to do this in a
smaller font.
When you get done, it should look almost exactly like this (with different numbers):
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Table 1:
Income Distribution
California, Santa Barbara County, and Census Tract 29.30
Total Households
Less than $10,000
$10,000 to $14,999
$15,000 to $24,999
$25,000 to $34,999
$35,000 to $49,999
$50,000 to $74,999
$75,000 to $99,999
$100,000 to $149,999
$150,000 to $199,999
$200,000 or more
Median income (dollars)
Mean income (dollars)
California
12,717,801
5.8%
5.1%
9.5%
8.9%
12.0%
16.7%
12.1%
15.0%
7.0%
7.9%
61,818
87,877
Santa Barbara County
142,713
5.1%
4.5%
8.8%
9.7%
11.9%
16.9%
12.7%
15.4%
7.1%
7.8%
63,985
89,903
Census Tract 29.30
2,897
9.5%
5.8%
5.7%
8.2%
6.7%
18.3%
14.5%
20.4%
3.8%
7.1%
71,078
83,729
Source: 2015 ACS 5-Year Estimates. Income reported in 2015 dollar values.
Writing a paragraph that describes your data
This sounds simple and it can be simple, but it is important to make sure you talk about your data
clearly. Heres an example based on my data:
Table 1 reports the income distribution for census tract 29.30 in Santa Barbara County, California. The
information in Table 1 suggests that the income distribution in the census tract is skewed toward lowerincome households, relative to county and the state. Nearly 10 percent of households in the census tract
report household incomes less than $10,000 per year, compared to approximately five percent at the
county and state level. It is possible that the census tract may be home to a larger proportion of lowerincome households because of its proximity to a university.
Using my example paragraph, Ill break down what Im doing step-by-step:
Sentence 1: Introductory sentences set the context and tells the reader what theyre looking at.
This is very important. Tables need to be introduced properly in the text of a paper, or else it can
become confusing for readers.
Sentence 2: The takeaway point(s) from the data in the table
This might be more sentences if you have more to say about the fact but I kept it simple. If your
table included a lot more information, it might be a better idea to write two separate paragraphs,
one for each point. If you write a second paragraph, you do not need to re-introduce the table.
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Sentence 3: This is an explicit reference to the table.
Notice that Im not just listing numbers. The reader can look at the numbers themselves, you want
to point out something that might not be obvious from just glancing at it that supports the point
from the previous sentence.
Sentence 5: Reinforce the point of the table and/or draw a conclusion.
I related this back to the fact that the census tract is by a university. The point of your tables will
be clearer when youre writing your own project. You will often have a broader point that youre
trying to show with your tables that you will refer back to.
Grading
Your grade on this Decomposed Project is based on the following:
Table (35%): Is the table formatted properly and displaying the correct information?
Content (35%): Is the data used to make logical comparisons between the census tract and the county? Is
the information coherent between the tables and the text?
Punctuation, Spelling, and Grammar (30%): Are there mistakes that distract the reader from the purpose
of the tables? Is the paragraph clear and easy to read?
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Explanation & Answer:
2 Paragraphs
Tags:
economics
urban economics
houses in California
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