Is there any way to find out how block groups from the 1990 census match with block groups from the 1980 census? I need to find or create data that would show the change in block group characteristics over time. I tried MABLE but it only has block group information for 1990 census.
The Census Bureau never released a complete set of digital boundaries below the county level for 1980, so there is no way to add the 1980 data in MABLE. We do have the (incomplete) boundary files for blocks and tracts, but not block groups, though one could aggregate the block level data. If you had these data and the 1990 data for your area of interest, you could do a change analysis using a GIS software package. The 1980 data are contained in the Archive of Census Related Products. For an overview of the archive content, see: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/collection/acrp
The 1990 data are available from the Census Bureau web site in a number of formats (http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/index.html and http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/).