Census Demographics
Solar power is interesting, but not as interesting as economic information for understanding customers. This section looks at some other types of information available, and at ways of combining this information with the purchase data. Of course, ZipCensus contains only a subset of all the possible information available from the Census Bureau.
The Extremes: Richest and Poorest
Several columns relate to wealth, which is very valuable information for understanding customers. You may not know how wealthy the customers are, but you can know how wealthy their neighbors are.
Median Income
The median household income in a zip code is the income in the middle, where half the households earn more than the median and half earn less. It is a very useful measure for understanding whether a given area is relatively wealthy or relatively poor. Households are a reasonable unit because they tend to correspond to an economic marketing unit—groups of individuals (such as families...