I have now produced eight years of Yost indexes at the census tract level to complement the indexes at the block group level published on September 30, 2020. Refer to my post of that date for an explanation of the variables that comprise the index and various technical notes. As a reminder, census tracts average about 4,000 people and there are about 72,000 in these data. Block groups average about 1,500 people and there are about 216,000 in these data. The data include all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, but not the other territories.
The files are available as zipped, comma-separated files:
Block group version (about 20 megabytes)
Census tract version (about 6 megabytes)
Each file contains the following fields:
- GEOID, a 14-digit unique geographic identifier defined by the census that can be linked with other census files and map files
- year, identifying the five-year period for which the Yost index was calculated. Values range from 2007-2011 and 2014-2018. In all cases, the 2010 census block group definitions apply.
- name, the block group, census tract, county and state written in words
- score, the score generated from the factor analysis. Few users will have need for this, but I included it in case anyone wanted to group the block groups other than by percentiles.
- index, the Yost index representing the percentile rank of the block group in the entire United States, where 1=most affluent and 100=most deprived. The index was calculated separately for each year, not pooled across years.
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