These are directions for downloading Census data as tables that you can edit in Excel and upload into ArcMap.
Go to the American FactFinder page at : http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en
In the left-hand menu choose Data Sets --> Decennial Census.
On the new Decennial page, there's a block labeled Other Resources on the right hand side of the page. In this block, click on the Download Center link.
In the Download Center, click on the Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF 1) 100-Percent Data link. You'll be taken to a Geography page, in which you can narrow the amount of data you want by geographic location. The choices are listed in the table from largest area (United States) to smallest area (All Blocks in a County). Remember: The larger an area you choose, the larger your downloaded dataset will be. Census data is dense, with many sub-categories within major categories like income. Try to be as specific as possible when choosing a geographic area for data download. This will save download time and time you use to look through the data to find what you want.
Once you've narrowed your geographic parameters sufficiently, you will choose a Download Method.
- Selected Detailed Tables - this allows you to choose specific data from various categories for the Census year you are downloading
- All Detailed Tables - in summary file format - this will download all tables from the Census year you are downloading - can be very data and memory intensive
Not all kinds of data are available at every geographic level. For instance, income data are not available in each Summary File. Other data are not available at the smaller geographic levels (Block level). There are times when you might have to settle for larger geographic coverage than you might want, or to get smaller sample sizes from the Census data than desirable.
Most data that is useful for GIS is available in the Summary File 1 or Summary File 3 data sets.