In the United States, city governments provide many services: they run public school districts, administer certain welfare and health programs, build roads and manage airports, provide police and fire protection, inspect buildings, and often run water and utility systems. Cities also get revenues through certain local taxes, various fees and permit costs, sale of property, and through the fees they charge for the utilities they run.
It would be interesting to compare all these expenses and revenues across cities and over time, but also quite difficult. Cities share many of these service responsibilities with other government agencies: in one particular city, some roads may be maintained by the state government, some law enforcement provided by the county sheriff, some schools run by independent school districts with their own tax revenue, and some utilities run by special independent utility districts. These governmental structures vary greatly by state and by individual city. It would be hard to make a fair comparison without taking into account all these differences.
This dataset takes into account all those differences. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy produces what they call “Fiscally Standardized Cities” (FiSCs), aggregating all services provided to city residents regardless of how they may be divided up by different government agencies and jurisdictions. Using this, we can study city expenses and revenues, and how the proportions of different costs vary over time.
The dataset tracks over 200 American cities between 1977 and 2020. Each row represents one city for one year. Revenue and expenditures are broken down into more than 120 categories.
Values are available for FiSCs and also for the entities that make it up: the city, the county, independent school districts, and any special districts, such as utility districts. There are hence five versions of each variable, with suffixes indicating the entity. For example, taxes gives the FiSC’s tax revenue, while taxes_city, taxes_cnty, taxes_schl, and taxes_spec break it down for the city, county, school districts, and special districts.
The values are organized hierarchically. For example, taxes is the sum of tax_property (property taxes), tax_sales_general (sales taxes), tax_income (income tax), and tax_other (other taxes). And tax_income is itself the sum of tax_income_indiv (individual income tax) and tax_income_corp (corporate income tax) subcategories.
The revenue and expenses variables are described in this detailed table. Further documentation is available on the FiSC Database website, linked in References below.
All monetary data is already adjusted for inflation, and is given in terms of 2020 US dollars per capita. The Consumer Price Index is provided for each year if you prefer to use numbers not adjusted for inflation, scaled so that 2020 is 1; simply divide each value by the CPI to get the value in that year’s nominal dollars. The total population is also provided if you want total values instead of per-capita values.
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This list ranks the 5 cities in the Major County, OK by Non-Hispanic White population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 345 cities in the Massachusetts by Non-Hispanic Black or African American population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
In 2022, San Francisco had the highest median household income of cities ranking within the top 25 in terms of population, with a median household income in of 136,692 U.S. dollars. In that year, San Jose in California was ranked second, and Seattle, Washington third.
Following a fall after the great recession, median household income in the United States has been increasing in recent years. As of 2022, median household income by state was highest in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Utah, and Massachusetts. It was lowest in Mississippi, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Families with an annual income of 25,000 and 49,999 U.S. dollars made up the largest income bracket in America, with about 25.26 million households.
Data on median household income can be compared to statistics on personal income in the U.S. released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal income rose to around 21.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2022, the highest value recorded. Personal income is a measure of the total income received by persons from all sources, while median household income is “the amount with divides the income distribution into two equal groups,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Half of the population in question lives above median income and half lives below. Though total personal income has increased in recent years, this wealth is not distributed throughout the population. In practical terms, income of most households has decreased. One additional statistic illustrates this disparity: for the lowest quintile of workers, mean household income has remained more or less steady for the past decade at about 13 to 16 thousand constant U.S. dollars annually. Meanwhile, income for the top five percent of workers has actually risen from about 285,000 U.S. dollars in 1990 to about 499,900 U.S. dollars in 2020.
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Sustainable cities depend on urban forests. City trees -- a pillar of urban forests -- improve our health, clean the air, store CO2, and cool local temperatures. Comparatively less is known about urban forests as ecosystems, particularly their spatial composition, nativity statuses, biodiversity, and tree health. Here, we assembled and standardized a new dataset of N=5,660,237 trees from 63 of the largest US cities. The data comes from tree inventories conducted at the level of cities and/or neighborhoods. Each data sheet includes detailed information on tree location, species, nativity status (whether a tree species is naturally occurring or introduced), health, size, whether it is in a park or urban area, and more (comprising 28 standardized columns per datasheet). This dataset could be analyzed in combination with citizen-science datasets on bird, insect, or plant biodiversity; social and demographic data; or data on the physical environment. Urban forests offer a rare opportunity to intentionally design biodiverse, heterogenous, rich ecosystems. Methods See eLife manuscript for full details. Below, we provide a summary of how the dataset was collected and processed.
Data Acquisition We limited our search to the 150 largest cities in the USA (by census population). To acquire raw data on street tree communities, we used a search protocol on both Google and Google Datasets Search (https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/). We first searched the city name plus each of the following: street trees, city trees, tree inventory, urban forest, and urban canopy (all combinations totaled 20 searches per city, 10 each in Google and Google Datasets Search). We then read the first page of google results and the top 20 results from Google Datasets Search. If the same named city in the wrong state appeared in the results, we redid the 20 searches adding the state name. If no data were found, we contacted a relevant state official via email or phone with an inquiry about their street tree inventory. Datasheets were received and transformed to .csv format (if they were not already in that format). We received data on street trees from 64 cities. One city, El Paso, had data only in summary format and was therefore excluded from analyses.
Data Cleaning All code used is in the zipped folder Data S5 in the eLife publication. Before cleaning the data, we ensured that all reported trees for each city were located within the greater metropolitan area of the city (for certain inventories, many suburbs were reported - some within the greater metropolitan area, others not). First, we renamed all columns in the received .csv sheets, referring to the metadata and according to our standardized definitions (Table S4). To harmonize tree health and condition data across different cities, we inspected metadata from the tree inventories and converted all numeric scores to a descriptive scale including “excellent,” “good”, “fair”, “poor”, “dead”, and “dead/dying”. Some cities included only three points on this scale (e.g., “good”, “poor”, “dead/dying”) while others included five (e.g., “excellent,” “good”, “fair”, “poor”, “dead”). Second, we used pandas in Python (W. McKinney & Others, 2011) to correct typos, non-ASCII characters, variable spellings, date format, units used (we converted all units to metric), address issues, and common name format. In some cases, units were not specified for tree diameter at breast height (DBH) and tree height; we determined the units based on typical sizes for trees of a particular species. Wherever diameter was reported, we assumed it was DBH. We standardized health and condition data across cities, preserving the highest granularity available for each city. For our analysis, we converted this variable to a binary (see section Condition and Health). We created a column called “location_type” to label whether a given tree was growing in the built environment or in green space. All of the changes we made, and decision points, are preserved in Data S9. Third, we checked the scientific names reported using gnr_resolve in the R library taxize (Chamberlain & Szöcs, 2013), with the option Best_match_only set to TRUE (Data S9). Through an iterative process, we manually checked the results and corrected typos in the scientific names until all names were either a perfect match (n=1771 species) or partial match with threshold greater than 0.75 (n=453 species). BGS manually reviewed all partial matches to ensure that they were the correct species name, and then we programmatically corrected these partial matches (for example, Magnolia grandifolia-- which is not a species name of a known tree-- was corrected to Magnolia grandiflora, and Pheonix canariensus was corrected to its proper spelling of Phoenix canariensis). Because many of these tree inventories were crowd-sourced or generated in part through citizen science, such typos and misspellings are to be expected. Some tree inventories reported species by common names only. Therefore, our fourth step in data cleaning was to convert common names to scientific names. We generated a lookup table by summarizing all pairings of common and scientific names in the inventories for which both were reported. We manually reviewed the common to scientific name pairings, confirming that all were correct. Then we programmatically assigned scientific names to all common names (Data S9). Fifth, we assigned native status to each tree through reference to the Biota of North America Project (Kartesz, 2018), which has collected data on all native and non-native species occurrences throughout the US states. Specifically, we determined whether each tree species in a given city was native to that state, not native to that state, or that we did not have enough information to determine nativity (for cases where only the genus was known). Sixth, some cities reported only the street address but not latitude and longitude. For these cities, we used the OpenCageGeocoder (https://opencagedata.com/) to convert addresses to latitude and longitude coordinates (Data S9). OpenCageGeocoder leverages open data and is used by many academic institutions (see https://opencagedata.com/solutions/academia). Seventh, we trimmed each city dataset to include only the standardized columns we identified in Table S4. After each stage of data cleaning, we performed manual spot checking to identify any issues.
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This list ranks the 1 cities in the Chesapeake city, VA by Asian population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 5 cities in the Duval County, FL by White population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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A dataset listing Maine cities by population for 2024.
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This list ranks the 5 cities in the Early County, GA by Some Other Race (SOR) population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 9 cities in the Avoyelles Parish, LA by Some Other Race (SOR) population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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License information was derived automatically
Context
This list ranks the 5 cities in the Duval County, FL by Some Other Race (SOR) population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 60 cities in the Worcester County, MA by White population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 11 cities in the Hardeman County, TN by Some Other Race (SOR) population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 4 cities in the Lake of the Woods County, MN by Non-Hispanic White population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
In 2023, the state with the highest crime rate in the United States per 100,000 inhabitants was New Mexico. That year, the crime rate was 3,636.83 crimes per 100,000 people. In comparison, New Hampshire had the lowest crime rate at 996.11 crimes per 100,000 people. Crime rate The crime rate in the United States has generally decreased over time. There are several factors attributed to the decrease in the crime rate across the United States. An increase in the number of police officers and an increase in income are some of the reasons for a decrease in the crime rate. Unfortunately, people of color have been disproportionately affected by crime rates, as they are more likely to be arrested for a crime versus a white person. Crime rates regionally The District of Columbia had the highest rate of reported violent crimes in the United States in 2023 per 100,000 inhabitants. The most common crime clearance type in metropolitan counties in the United States in 2020 was murder and non-negligent manslaughter. The second most dangerous city in the country in 2020 was Detroit. Detroit has faced severe levels of economic and demographic declines in the past years. Not only has the population decreased, the city has filed for bankruptcy. Despite the median household income increasing, the city still struggles financially.
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This list ranks the 944 cities in the Missouri by White population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 126 cities in the Montana by Non-Hispanic White population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 5 cities in the Allen Parish, LA by Black or African American population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 13 cities in the Multnomah County, OR by Asian population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
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This list ranks the 1 cities in the Baltimore city, MD by Multi-Racial Asian population, as estimated by the United States Census Bureau. It also highlights population changes in each cities over the past five years.
When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, including:
Variables / Data Columns
Good to know
Margin of Error
Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.
Custom data
If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.
Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.
In the United States, city governments provide many services: they run public school districts, administer certain welfare and health programs, build roads and manage airports, provide police and fire protection, inspect buildings, and often run water and utility systems. Cities also get revenues through certain local taxes, various fees and permit costs, sale of property, and through the fees they charge for the utilities they run.
It would be interesting to compare all these expenses and revenues across cities and over time, but also quite difficult. Cities share many of these service responsibilities with other government agencies: in one particular city, some roads may be maintained by the state government, some law enforcement provided by the county sheriff, some schools run by independent school districts with their own tax revenue, and some utilities run by special independent utility districts. These governmental structures vary greatly by state and by individual city. It would be hard to make a fair comparison without taking into account all these differences.
This dataset takes into account all those differences. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy produces what they call “Fiscally Standardized Cities” (FiSCs), aggregating all services provided to city residents regardless of how they may be divided up by different government agencies and jurisdictions. Using this, we can study city expenses and revenues, and how the proportions of different costs vary over time.
The dataset tracks over 200 American cities between 1977 and 2020. Each row represents one city for one year. Revenue and expenditures are broken down into more than 120 categories.
Values are available for FiSCs and also for the entities that make it up: the city, the county, independent school districts, and any special districts, such as utility districts. There are hence five versions of each variable, with suffixes indicating the entity. For example, taxes gives the FiSC’s tax revenue, while taxes_city, taxes_cnty, taxes_schl, and taxes_spec break it down for the city, county, school districts, and special districts.
The values are organized hierarchically. For example, taxes is the sum of tax_property (property taxes), tax_sales_general (sales taxes), tax_income (income tax), and tax_other (other taxes). And tax_income is itself the sum of tax_income_indiv (individual income tax) and tax_income_corp (corporate income tax) subcategories.
The revenue and expenses variables are described in this detailed table. Further documentation is available on the FiSC Database website, linked in References below.
All monetary data is already adjusted for inflation, and is given in terms of 2020 US dollars per capita. The Consumer Price Index is provided for each year if you prefer to use numbers not adjusted for inflation, scaled so that 2020 is 1; simply divide each value by the CPI to get the value in that year’s nominal dollars. The total population is also provided if you want total values instead of per-capita values.