Individual Income by ZIP Code Area, 1969 and 1979

TL;DR — An IRS Statistics of Income study using ZIP-level tax data to test the snow-belt-to-sun-belt migration story.

⬇ Download the archived copy — kept here so the document survives its source going dark. US federal government work (17 USC §105).

An IRS Statistics of Income study. “Much has been written about shifts in economic activity from the so-called ‘snow belt’ to the ‘sun belt’ states” — and this is the paper that checks it against actual tax returns at ZIP-code resolution for 1969 and 1979.

The method is the interesting part: administrative tax data gives a far finer geographic picture than the census of the period, and the authors are explicit about what it can and cannot support.

A good example of the government statistics that underlie narratives most people only meet as narrative.

Where this came from

• Brendan Sheehan’s public are.na channel

28 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.