Sum up population totals in buffers

[NitaHuff]

Hi everyone I'm having some trouble and wondered if someone could help.  I'm conducting a zonal travel cost assessment and I have an ESRI point layer file of zip codes for the U.S. that has the 2012 populations in the attribute table.  I've created a multiple ring buffer around my feature of interest and what I would like to do is see the sum total population contained within each buffer.  Any suggestions? I've tried selecting by location tool but it just gives a list of the zip codes within the buffer (there are a lot) is there anyway to get a total?

[NitaHuff]

Thank you I'll try this

[NitaHuff]

It's still not working for me I don't know if it is my error.  I have created a multiple ring buffer at various distances around a park.  And I have visitor data organized by zip code within this attribute table there is a field POP2012 I want the total sum of POP2012 for all the locations that fall within individual buffers.  When I tried the dissolve I still had to click on each point.

[RichardFairhurst · Accepted solution]

Spatial Join the buffers as the Target and the points as the Join features using the One to One option.  Make sure that the field list shows the Population field you want from the points and make sure the summary function is sum.  Output should be your ring buffers with population.