School District Life Expectancy Processing Code

This repository contains the code used to convert USALEEP tract-level life expectancy estimates (2010–2015) into school-district–level measures.

Data Requirements

Automatically downloaded by the notebook

• USALEEP (United States Small-Area Life Expectancy Estimates Project) 2010–2015 life table files
• 2010 Census P.L. 94-171 Redistricting Data (BLOCKID, TRACTCE, POP10)

Manually downloaded

Download the 2010 School District Block Assignment Files (BAFs) and place into census_files/:

• SDSEC.txt
• SDELM.txt
• SDUNI.txt

These files provide the BLOCKID → school district mapping.

Software Requirements

Python 3.12.7
Packages: pandas, numpy, tqdm, requests, dbfread, glob, os, geopandas, matplotlib

How to Run

1. Download the BAF TXT files into the census_files/ directory.

2. Open and run:

   01_processing_notebook.ipynb
   

3. The notebook will:

   • Download USALEEP files
   • Download and unzip P.L. 94-171
   • Read BAF TXT files and extract BLOCKIDs (PR excluded)
   • Merge block population and tract IDs
   • Assign tract life expectancy to blocks
   • Aggregate block-level values to school districts using population weights

Key output CSVs are saved in the Data_output.

Outputs

• Block-level master table (BLOCKID, TRACTID, POP10, district IDs, USALEEP variables)
• School-district–level life expectancy dataset (population-weighted aggregates)
• Summary tables and visualizations

Reproducibility

This code corresponds to the workflow described in the manuscript Methods section. All steps use publicly available datasets and reproducible Python code.