Vintage Consistent Geography Documentation for the Longitudinal Business Database

Melissa Chow, Marina Krylova, Kassandra McLean and Martha Stinson

CES Technical Notes Series from Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau

Abstract: This paper describes the three types of geography variables available on the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) – original Business Register state and county codes, vintage consistent (VC) geocodes that place every establishment in a 2023 state and county, and time invariant geocodes that assign each establishment a single state and county across all years. We begin by discussing the assignment process used to create vintage consistent (VC) geography variables. Starting with the 2023 vintage of the LBD, all addresses across all years were geocoded using SAS routines to assign latitude and longitude which were then used to create VC state, county, and zip code variables based on 2023 geographic boundaries. We next describe the creation of the time invariant geography variables used for all geographic tabulations in the Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics. These are created by choosing the VC geocodes from the most recent Economic Census. We end by comparing the three types of geography variables and discussing the appropriate uses for each one.

Keywords: LBD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09
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