State and County Profiles on South Carolina State Agency Webpages

Many of the state agencies of South Carolina are posting both statistical and narrative profiles of the state and counties for the areas they address.  Once these profiles were only made available in print format, possibly monthly or quarterly, but more often only annually.  Now, however, the information can be posted quickly to the website, so that current information is more readily available.  Usually the data is presented in a format that is easy to print or download.  Some of the agencies that post state and/or county profiles include:

South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control

            SC DHEC reports on the status of health and presence of disease or risky behaviors at http://www.scdhec.gov/hs/epidata/county_reports.htm.  The page allows a user to choose a county or region and then view a list of reports.   The disease reports are color graphs for a region or trends in mortality for the state.

South Carolina Employment Security Commission

            SC ESC has three pages of county or labor area profiles.  County Spotlights (http://www.sces.org/lmi/Spotlights/index.asp ) are single page descriptions of the population, labor force, income, location and climate.  Workforce Investment Area (WIA) reports (http://www.sces.org/lmi/Spotlights/WIA/index.asp ) are similar to county spotlights, but are on 12 areas in South Carolina.  Information includes extended demographic and labor statistics.  Summary workforce information is reported monthly at http://www.sces.org/lmi/news/news.asp#Labor_Force_Data_by_Workforce_Investment_Area .

South Carolina Department of Commerce

            SC Department of Commerce has county and city profiles giving information for prospective businesses at http://www.sccommerce.com/SearchCommunityProfiles.aspx.   Simple search yields information by name or county.  Advanced search allows a user to specify ports or interstate locations or to limit reports by population or labor market.  Short reports on labor markets by place are also available (http://www.sccommerce.com/Searchlaborprofiles.aspx ).

South Carolina Department of Education

            SC Department of Education reports on the status of schools in the counties at http://ed.sc.gov/topics/researchandstats/schoolreportcard/ .  Choose the year desired, then the county.  On the county page there will be a links to a Printable pdf Report Card for the County  and to links for specific school reports.  Reports give enrollment and summary reports on annual exams.

South Carolina Office of Research and Statistics

            SC ORS receives information both from the state agencies and from the US Census Bureau.  Their page of Community Profiles (http://www.sccommunityprofiles.org/ ) provides statistical profiles at the state, county, place, zip code, and census tract levels.

These profiles of the state and counties provide valuable information.  However, in most cases only current information is available, as reports are merely updated as new information is acquired.  Because the agencies opt to update existing documents instead of creating new documents that can be saved for comparison, they create the risk that vital information about the state may be lost.  Agencies are encouraged to cooperate with the South Carolina State Library Depository System in efforts to identify and preserve the information about South Carolina and its residents.

Census data can be confusing. Not everyone is born with a spreadsheet in their hand ready to take on large masses of numbers. That’s where Social Explorer comes in. This project from Queens College of the City University of New York uses interactive demographic maps to help you visualize just what those numbers mean. And a map is just more fun right?

Social Explorer has both free data to use and subscription-only data. Data available for the public to use includes US census data from 1940-2000, at the national, state, county, and sometimes tract level for mostly-general variables such as Employment or Race. Subscription-only data includes some block level, zip code and place level as well as more-specific variables such as Employment by Sex or Employment by Race.

Where this website really stands out is in the ease of use of the mapping interface and the amount of zooming in you can do. Looking at Columbia, you can see certain demographic trends very easily in a way that would be less meaningful in a non-map form. For example, the percentages of people in the educational profession go way up near the university. But family income is highest in Forest Acres and near Lake Murray.

In Social Explorer, you can also build tables for demographic information based on the 2000 Census. This is useful, but mostly the same interface as the detailed and custom tables you can make with American Fact Finder

Here is a map of Columbia by Median Family Income (2000 data).  Click on the map for the full image.