There are currently 1,098 different demographic categories reported by the U.S. states and territories, which is an unmanageable quantity.
More concerning is the fact that the data is so disparate it’s essentially impossible to compare between states. There are no standards for categorizing demographic data, so individual decisions to label categories with similar but different names, such as “Hawaiian” vs. “Hawaiian/Pacific Islander,” complicate the data. There are currently 1,098 different demographic categories reported by the U.S. states and territories, which is an unmanageable quantity. This description of data disarray does not even include testing, hospitalization, or cross-categorization metrics, such as “white women aged 30-45,” which would add thousands more categories.
There are even discrepancies within the same state. In Georgia, the demographic age categories on the state COVID-19 dashboard do not match the age categories on the state vaccination dashboard. A 60-year-old Georgia resident would be in the 60-69 age demographic group for a COVID-19 case, but in the 55-64 age group for their COVID-19 vaccination. This one person has already contributed data to two separate demographic pools, before accounting for sex, ethnicity, and race.