Pawel Janas/Data

Data

Datasets on U.S. cities, counties, and state and local public finance

Panel and cross-sectional datasets transcribed from historical government publications, financial manuals and state archives, together with a modern panel of state and local tax rates. Each dataset is archived on openICPSR with a permanent DOI; this site documents the coverage, sources and files and gives the citation for each.

Compiled by Pawel Janas, California Institute of Technology

9public datasets
1904–1940historical panels
1975–2022tax-rate panel
Stata & Excelfile formats

Datasets

Select a dataset for its sources, files, citation and version.

U.S. citiesCity-level panels on municipal finance, debt, schools, mortality and manufacturing, 1904–1940.

Financial Statistics of Cities

Annual revenue, expenditure and debt of U.S. cities.

1924–1938City-yearV2

Municipal Bonds

Bond-level cross-section of municipal debt outstanding in 1929.

1929BondV2

Education Statistics

Revenue, expenditure, debt and enrollment of public city school systems.

1922–1940City-yearV2

Vital Statistics

Annual deaths by cause in U.S. cities.

1915–1938City-yearV1

Manufacturing – City

City-level manufacturing output and employment, about every five years.

1904–1939City-yearV1

U.S. countiesCounty-level panels and cross-sections on manufacturing and national banking in the interwar period.

Manufacturing – County

County-level manufacturing output and employment, biennially.

1927–1937County-yearV1

Manufacturing – Industries

Spatial distribution of manufacturing industries across counties in 1927.

1927CountyV1

Banking Conditions

Aggregate national bank balance sheets by county, annually.

1924–1931County-yearV1

State and local taxesAnnual tax rates for U.S. states and counties, 1975–2022.

State and Local Tax Rates

Annual personal income, corporate income, property, sales and excise tax rates.

1975–2022State-year, county-yearV2

Research

Papers that use these data.

Used these data in your work?

Let me know about your paper and I will list it here.

Citing the data

Please cite the paper associated with a dataset, if any, and the openICPSR project citation. Each dataset page gives both, with BibTeX.

Files are distributed through openICPSR, which asks users to sign in (free) before downloading. Several of the historical datasets were funded by the Economic History Association.