Abstract

This tool--a simple csv file for merging--gives you a fast way to assign Census county FIPS codes to variously presented county names. This is useful for dealing with county names collected from official sources, such as election returns, which inconsistently present county names and often have misspellings. There are about 3,142 counties in the U.S., and there are 77,613 different permutations of county names in this file (ave=25 per county, max=382).

This tool--a simple csv or Stata file for merging--gives you a fast way to assign Census county FIPS codes to variously presented county names. This is useful for dealing with county names collected from official sources, such as election returns, which inconsistently present county names and often have misspellings. It will likely take less than ten minutes the first time, and about one minute thereafter--assuming all versions of your county names are in this file. There are about 3,142 counties in the U.S., and there are 77,613 different permutations of county names in this file (ave=25 per county, max=382). Counties with more likely permutations have more versions. Misspellings were added as I came across them over time. I DON'T expect people to cite the use of this tool. DO feel free to suggest the addition of other county name permutations.