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STDCITY
Standardized city, alphabetic string
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Description

STDCITY is a string variable indicating incorporated municipalities (e.g., cities and villages).

STDCITY only exists in the 1940 1% sample. The original geographic strings that were entered for 1940 are often inconsistent and sometimes unclear as to which places they are specifying. Standardized geographic place names were created for consistency using an auxiliary dictionary of 1940 census geography compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). NARA created this dictionary when they digitized original enumeration sheets from the 1940 census. The standardized geography string variables included in the 1940 file are: STDCITY, STDTRACT, STDWARD, STDED, STDMCD and STDCNTY. These standardized string variables also correspond to the published population reports from the 1940 census.

Another variable, INCSTR, contains the original "as entered" alphabetic string for city. Most users will find STDCITY more useful because it contains strings that are uniform for each place.