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County Definitions
April 22, 2025
The county definitions and county-equivalent definitions used in the Woods & Poole database are defined by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA.) In New England, counties were created by summing townships and creating county-equivalent areas. Parishes in Louisiana, Boroughs in Alaska, and Independent Cities in Maryland, Missouri, and Nevada are called counties in the Woods & Poole database. In some states, notably Virginia, counties exist with independent cities. In cases where boundaries between counties and independent cities (or counties and other counties) have changed since 1969, new county groups were created to maintain the consistency of the historical data.
A number of counties aggregated in previous editions of the Woods & Poole database have been disaggregated in the 2024 edition. All of the historical data, 1969 to 2022, for all of the disaggregated counties are estimated.
Data and projections for the following counties are now in the Woods & Poole database (FIPS codes in parentheses): Aleutian Islands East Borough AK (02013), Aleutian Islands West Census Area AK (02016), Bethel Census Area AK (02050), Denali Borough AK (02068), Dillingham Census Area AK (02070), Haines Borough AK (02100), Hoonah-Angoon Census Area AK (02105), Kenai Peninsula Borough AK (02122), Lake and Peninsula Borough AK (02164), North Slope Borough AK (02185), Petersburg Borough, AK (02195), Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area AK (02198), Sitka Borough AK (02220), Skagway Municipality AK (02230), Southeast Fairbanks Census Area AK (02240),Valdez-Cordova Census Area AK (02261), Wrangell City and Borough AK (02275),Yakutat Borough AK (02282),
Yukon-Koyukuk AK (02290), La Paz AZ (04012),Yuma AZ (04027), Broomfield CO (08014), Cibola, NM (35006),Valencia, NM (35061), Menominee,WI (55078), and Shawano,WI (55115).
The eight Connecticut legacy counties, and not the nine Connecticut planning regions, which replaced Connecticut counties beginning in 2022, are used in the 2024 Woods & Poole database. The following planning regions are not included in the 2024 database (FIPS codes in parentheses): Capitol Planning Region CT (09110), Greater Bridgeport Planning Region CT (09120), Lower Connecticut River Valley Planning Region CT (9130), Naugatuck Valley Planning Region CT (09140), Northeastern Connecticut Planning Region CT (09150), Northwest Hills Planning Region CT (09160), South Central Connecticut Planning Region CT (09170), Southeastern Connecticut Planning Region CT (09180), and Western Connecticut Planning Region (09190). Census postcensal population data, which were reported in planning regions and not legacy counties, for 2020 to 2022 (which sum to the state total) were distributed to legacy county geographies using legacy county proportions of the Connecticut state total.
Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) codes are defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to give numeric “names” to geographic areas such as states and counties. Each state has a two-digit FIPS code (Alabama is 01 and Wyoming is 56) and counties have five-digit codes with the first two digits being the state code: Autauga AL is 01001 and Weston WY is 56045.