The Census Bureau keeps abreast of new concepts and approaches, and weighs their possible use in its geographic hierarchy for data presentations. New geographic designations appear frequently, and a few find their way into public usage. Although the names Sunbelt, Frostbelt, and Rustbelt have found favor in some quarters, these terms often mean one particular combination of States (and sometimes, counties) to some people and a different combination of States and counties to others. Moreover, the perception of regions can shift in terms of both names and boundaries with changing circumstances; today’s Energy Belt may be tomorrow’s Oil Bust Belt. Such geographic combinations appear to fit, more properly, into special, one-of-a-kind statistical tabulations that some data users request from a particular census or survey. The Census Bureau sometimes uses such large-area regions to meet the particular needs of special data presentations. Examples are travel regions, which are groupings of States, and oil and gas districts, which represent combinations of selected producing counties. Also, the Census Bureau always is ready to provide special tabulations, at cost, for almost any set of geographic combinations data users may request. However, the acceptance of new general-purpose geographic regions by the Census Bureau hinges upon an overall favorable consensus of the data user community regarding a long-standing set of statistical entities.
Statistical Groupings6-25
