Who’s Moved Out and Who’s Moved In: Exploring Housing and Migration Data Using a New Data Resource—Carolina Demography

<p>Numerous prestigious universities in North Carolina hold huge amounts of expertise and data, but often it is inaccessible to professionals working at the local level.   The relatively new center called Carolina Demography is an effort to bring the power of high-level population research to local needs.  This post discusses the type of data available of interest to community economic development (CED) professionals, using migration data as an example.</p> <p>The Carolina Population Center, located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been around for decades, but its work has focused primarily on supporting major academic research initiatives, primarily national and international in nature.  A little more than a year ago, however, it launched a new service called Carolina Demography.  In making the announcement, the Director of the Population Center noted “In recent years…we have done little to serve directly the state of North Carolina.”    The new service is meant to provide North Carolina-specific data and consulting services on population and demographic trends to communities.</p> <p>There is a limited set of data available for free on its web site.  Much of the information provided is re-packaged from national sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the American Community Survey, but the benefit for CED professionals is that they are focused on issues common to community economic development discussions.  For example, the web site features data on housing units for each decade from 1940-2050 (projected) at the block group level – the smallest geographic unit available.  There are 6,155 block groups [...]</p>