John Graunt was born in 19620 and published Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality which was one of the first really study in Demographics. It contained a life table which was the forerunner of the acuity tables used by insurers today. Today, we are going to look at some of the places you can get demographic information on the net….without spending a fortune.
1. The best place for US information is the US Census Bureau. They have a wealth of information and it doesn’t cost a fortune. Best place for general information regarding populations, incomes, poverty, etc for people who would like to include this information in articles and reports. In fact, most of the demographic information found on free websites comes from the Census Bureau.
2. FreeDemographicsis a easy to use tool to get quick information without spending any cash. They have simplified and broken down much of the Census information for faster look-up.
3. Wikipedia is a occasionally a good source of demographics for areas outside the US
4. The CIA is another good source of world wide demographics. Not everything they do is secret.
5. If you like Google Map, you’ll love the AnalyGIS API that can be added to it. Its interesting how you can pick a point on the map and it will tell you about the people that live within 1, 3, and 5 miles of that point.
6. For Health Information checkout http://www.measuredhs.com/ This site has a lot to do with health surveys.
7. Zipskinny is a fun easy to use little tool for demographic information.
8. Free Lunch is a nice place for those who don’t like to pay for their information. However, it does take a bit more digging than some of the other sites.
9. Cdyne provides a trial of their demographic services. If you don’t need to look up a lot of information and can live with the 20 requests per day limit, this is a good source.
10. For historical information, the Social Explorer is a good site. On a limited basis this information goes back to 1790.
Many good choices for the list today. The Soda Fountain was patented on this day and the IBM PC was introduced, both of which could have been great lists.
Tags: census, demographics, John Graunt
