US Census Bureau Educational Attainment Data

Since I used U.S. Census Bureau data for part of my discussion in my last post, I decided to quickly examine their educational attainment data. For this visualization, I used a doughnut chart. I briefly considered a chart with multiple doughnut charts to include the information desegrated by males and females, but it was not very interesting because the percentages for males and female educational attainment is remarkably similar. Women are one or two percentage points higher for the attainment of college degrees.

The Census Bureau does not publish the percentages for all options for educations by race. It just publishes the percentage of the population that has obtained a high school degree or higher and a bachelor’s degree or higher. I am not sure how best to show the data yet, but it shows a real difference in the attainment of bachelor’s degrees by race.

Unlike the Maryland Longitudinal System Center data I examined in my last post, this data reflects the population living in Maryland at the time of the survey, not just public high school graduates.

Using Datawrapper

A note about datawrapper, I had to update the chart because I forgot to uncheck the box that makes the top row the label row. It was easy to fix, but it is a reminder to check your data before publishing.

Some College, No Degree

What I find most interesting is what a large percent of the population is in the "some college, no degree" category. Seven percent of the population has earned an associate's degree, while 18 percent are in the "some college, no degree" category.

No High School Degree

Another fact that I find interesting is that nearly 10 percent of the population of Maryland age 25 and over do not have a high school diploma. From this data set I do not know if the people without a high school diploma are younger, older, or evenly distributed between younger and older people.