How join five shapefiles together

[ABDALLAMOHAMED]

I have four shapefiles (polygons) and I want to combine them in one shapefile so that I can do some analyses on them. The data in these shapefiles are as follow:

shapefile (1) has poverty poverty rates for white, black and latinos for 1980.

shapefile (2) has the same information for 1990

shapefile(3) has the same info for 2000

shapefile (4) has the same info for 2010

So i want to combine them in one shapefile as follow:-

 1980   1990   2000  2010

is there anyway i can do i using ArcMap 10.2.2

Thanks a lot

[DanPatterson_Retired]

I am suspecting that the geometry has changed during this time period and/or the categorical breaks, otherwise you would have ruled out a sequential attribute join of the 2010 table to 2000, then to 1990 ultimately to 1980 (saving intermediate steps as needed, using the census key as the join field)

Can you state whether the geometry hasn't changed during the time period and whether the classifications remained the same?

[ABDALLAMOHAMED]

Hello Dan. Thanks a lot for your response. These files are separate files and so the geometry and calssifications remained the same. I just wanted to join them together into one file so that it becomes easy for me to do some analyses. Is there any tool than can join them together at once, or I have to use the join tool and join one at the time?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

one at a time Add Join—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop make sure you save the results to make them persist.  There may be a quicker table, but a single join takes no time, so by the time you get a work-around figured out you would be done.  I usually use numpy for such activities, but it is only marginally faster, assuming all the data are already in array format... but that would require a learning curve

[ABDALLAMOHAMED]

okay, I will do that,Thanks a lotBest wishes