Census Geography Question

Question

A professor is looking for geography files where a county (Census Division, ex. Albert county in NB) is broken down to census tracts and the revenues.

We also found this link to the maps

http://geodepot.statcan.ca/Diss/Maps/ReferenceMaps/
ct_cmapdf_f.cfm?startrow=46&Geocode=305&Cmaname=Moncton

It looks like we were somewhere close, but how does one go through 4 pages of maps identified only by codes?

Answer

A quick note about Census geographies:

A Census Tract only appears in Census Metropolitan and Census Agglomeration areas (large urban centres) which have been tracted. An entire county will not be covered by Census Tracts normally as it sometimes encompasses both large urban and rural areas.

When looking at a Census Division (county in New Brunswick) you can break it down into these geographies:

Census Division:
- Census Subdivision (CSD)
- Dissemination Area (DA)
- Designated Places (DPL)
- Census Consolidated Subdivision (CCS)

If your client is looking at a level of geography lower than CSD, perhaps DA would be your best bet as it will cover the entire county.

When you identify the level of geography you want, then perhaps the electronic profile would be a good match for finding the income variable. However, if you need for variables to be crossed (i.e., income by sex by age for example), then you must find the appropriate topic-based tabulations to meet your needs.

The codes correspond to the Dissemination Areas. You will need to find the DAs that interest you and then retrieve the data that corresponds to it from the DLI FTP server. That is the real reason for the maps - so you can visualise the areas and select which geography codes best meet your needs. The street names should help you situate the areas a little better.