Demographic Data

Agriculture Series    National Series    Population Series    Geography Series    

About the Maps

The Five-Year Issue Based Review in which the Southeast Extension District is currently participating includes an expectation that the faculty and staff will pay close attention to demographic conditions and trends that characterize the populations that we serve. It is, of course, entirely logical that in the process of planning for our strategic direction over the next five years we would carefully examine the array of data pertaining to our region.

Making sense of these numbers is, however, complex. There are 21 counties in the Southeast District, and they are really quite diverse in terms of their residents, their human ecology, and their economy. Averages do not tell a very useful story in such a diverse system, and often a numerical presentation of demographic data is more confusing than informative. Even graphic representations of such data can become very difficult to interpret when large numbers of cases are examined.

Maps offer an intuitively pleasing alternative to other kinds of demographic presentation. If counties cluster together naturally in a region, it will be very apparent. Likewise counties that lie outside of the regional pattern for some reason will also be apparent. Readers often find maps to be very supportive in helping them sort out the reasons for regional variation, since comparing a series of maps gives clues as to correlations between various social and economic variables.

The following pages include maps of Nebraska, in which, with only a few exceptions, county level data have been arrayed in quartiles. That is, these maps demonstrate what counties fall within each quarter of all Nebraska counties on a number of selected characteristics. Interpretation of these maps must still be made cautiously, as the quartiles are based on county counts, and the data themselves can be quite skewed within those quartiles. Still, maps provide a good place for the District to begin it's demographic analysis.

The current map set includes some current population estimates from the Bureau of the Census, and a number of variable from the last Census of Agriculture. The descriptive statements associated with each map are limited to implications for the Southeast District, and for the most part make no real effort to explain what is being observed, but rather only to describe what is shown. Understanding why we see what we see, and its implications for our future programmatic direction is essentially the task before us in our issue based review.

If you can find uses for these maps that do not relate to the review, whether you are an Extension Educator in another part of the state, from some other organization, or simply interested in what you see, please do not hesitate to copy and use the graphics.

Data Sources