Benefits, Burdens, and Prospects of the American Community Survey Summary of a Workshop (2013) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 State, Local, Tribal, and Urban/Rural Uses of ACS Data
5 State, Local, Tribal, and Urban/Rural Uses of ACS Data
Pages 75-98
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 75... ...
Users at the state, local, and tribal levels -- whether working directly for governmental units and affiliated agencies or participating in the Census Bureau's State Data Center network to disseminate data broadly -- are a sufficiently large and important sector of the ACS user base to warrant a dedicated workshop session. Included in this mix are users who focus on the general issues of rural policy, an area of study for which the ACS presents special benefits and burdens: While those interested in urban policy and large populated areas face the "problem" of handling a wealth of ACS estimates of different vintages (1-, 3-, and 5-year estimates all covering large population groups)
|
From page 76... ...
. In spring 2012, the Minnesota SDC collaborated with the state's Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans -- a state agency tasked to report to the governor and legislature on issues important to Minnesota's Asian community -- on a broad 1 The Minnesota State Demographic Center is administratively housed in the state Department of Administration.
|
From page 77... ...
from the ACS, profiling the nativity, ancestry, and socioeconomic and housing conditions of the state's major Asian subpopulations. She said that she found it necessary to build the special tabulations, rather than use the detailed tables (which she made certain to describe as "easily accessible" from the Census Bureau's American FactFinder interface)
|
From page 78... ...
She said that the Census Bureau plans to release special tabulations for EEO compliance at the end of calendar year 2012, and that these special tabulations will facilitate much more detailed analysis than SDC's PUMS work. However, waiting until the end of 2012 was not a viable option -- the state human rights commissioner faced a deadline to get the data on hiring goals during the state legislative session because 2012 is a revenue bonding year.
|
From page 79... ...
Taking a longerterm, life-course look by examining educational attainment and state of birth, Table 5-2 suggests that Minnesota ranks fairly high in retaining degreed workers who were born in the state; only the country-sized economies of Texas and California, as well as North Carolina, have higher "staying power."
|
From page 80... ...
They were very encouraged by the results -- it was an "engagement project using data," and the results were numerous, interesting ways of presenting data for the SDC to consider moving forward. 5–B PLANNING HUMAN SERVICES IN RURAL AMERICA Kathleen Miller -- program director of the Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI)
|
From page 81... ...
Particularly in light of the economic recession and funding pressures created by federal and state budget deficits, Kresge tasked RUPRI to develop a national overview of how needs for services vary by geography and urbanization, and what types of needs for services occur in different combinations in different places. That regions of the country -- many of them poor -- are characterized by persistent poverty is well known, but the way in which needs for services vary within those areas is much less clear.
|
From page 82... ...
The release of the 2005–2009 5-year ACS estimates was the first exposure to ACS data and first update of socioeconomic data since the 2000 census for about 40 percent of counties -- and, for purposes of rural data analysis, "this was early Christmas." The approach taken by Miller and RUPRI was to construct a data set of 12 demographic and economic indicators for all counties. While most of these indicators could be calculated directly from the 5-year ACS data, RUPRI favored data resources from the U.S.
|
From page 83... ...
What also struck RUPRI staff was the vast swath of the country with 0 risk factors and the remote nature of many of the highest-scoring counties, suggesting the possibility of significant transportation barriers and difficulty in service delivery. RUPRI's full analysis of these data tries to probe what is behind the redshaded areas on the map -- what combinations of the 12 indicators/risk factors seem to show up with greatest frequency, and where.
|
From page 85... ...
RUPRI's particular analysis of human services risk factors would not have been possible without the 5-year estimates; the work has helped RUPRI develop hypotheses for further research and helped the sponsoring Kresge Foundation retool its portfolio of grants dealing with human services. 5–C MAPPING ACS DETAIL IN NEW YORK CITY Shifting from ACS analysis of intensely rural areas to the survey's use in explaining trends in the nation's largest city, Steven Romalewski described recent work in the mapping of ACS estimates and -- in particular -- first steps in reflecting margins of error in the plots.
|
From page 86... ...
First, Romalewski said that he and his colleagues try to adhere to the counsel of the Census Bureau and the National Research Council (2007b) to refrain from comparing estimates for overlapping time intervals; given that the fine levels of geography of greatest pertinence to CUNY's users are only available in the 5-year products, Romalewski also feels the frustration of twice-a-decade comparisons.
|
From page 87... ...
The specific screenshot he chose to display zoomed in on central Long Island (Suffolk County) and displayed the percentage of occupied housing units with no vehicles available.
|
From page 88... ...
To illustrate the point, Romalewski revisited the view of block groups in Suffolk County, shaded based on the percentage of housing units with no access to a vehicle, using 5-year 2006–2010 ACS estimates. 7 The maps were clipped to make a vertical, portrait-orientation presentation and so focus on the core of the Chicago area in Illinois; the map coverages spill over into northern Wisconsin and northwest Indiana but the view is truncated, as it is for outer-ring Illinois counties like DeKalb and LaSalle.
|
From page 89... ...
It is a "world of difference" between the two maps and -- for purposes of envisioning specific transportation routes and policies -- it suggests that the ACS data exhibit extreme uncertainty at the fine, block-group level. Romalewski's next series of maps looked at the same geographic area -- Suffolk County, this time looking at census tracts rather than block groups -- but a slightly different data source.
|
From page 90... ...
Given this application area, one instinctive "answer" to the problem of volatility in the ACS estimates -- switching to a more aggregate level of resolution like county subdivisions or defined villages -- is not really viable; higher-level geographic aggregates are far from optimal for purposes of planning specific, targeted voter registration drives or activities affiliated with schools. Using the CVAP data, Romalewski began by repeating the approach of generating separate maps based on lower-bound and upper-bound estimates for per
|
From page 91... ...
population from the 2010 census summary data file. This is not the same population because it is not restricted to citizens, but it can serve as an intuitive check -- or an effective, true upper bound -- on the CVAP data.
|
From page 92... ...
lived "on reservation," within the Navajo Nation's tribal lands. That figure represents a decreased share of Navajo living on tribal land compared to the 2000 census (about 61 percent)
|
From page 93... ...
• Percentage of people whose spoken language is something other than English: As a crude measure of speakers of the Navajo language, the Division of Economic Development calculated the percentage of each chapter's popu lation that reported speaking a language other than English; presumably, this mainly identifies speakers of the native Navajo language and its di alects. About 70.7 percent of the entire on-reservation Navajo Nation population speak a non-English language, per the presentation's calcula tions.
|
From page 94... ...
However, the division's work in putting the documents in one place means that the chapters have a single source and do not need to learn the nuances of American FactFinder on their own. Tsosie said that this repository of reports -- and the ACS's coverage in Navajo Nation -- has been very well received by the chapters, and has been particularly appreciated by officials from the tribal government and individual chapters involved in preparing grant proposals.
|
From page 95... ...
Though tribal and chapter leaders appreciate the value of the numbers they are beginning to receive from the ACS, there is a great deal of confusion over exactly how the data are collected -- on and off reservation lands -- on an ongoing basis. The data collection process is much more visible in the decennial census, with its high-profile publicity push and its structured interactions with tribal authorities on how to conduct the enumeration.10 But exactly how the Census Bureau operates on tribal lands in off-census years, and how it regularly collects ACS information in on-reservation lands -- while respecting the reservation's sovereignty -- remains a great mystery to outside observers.
|
From page 96... ...
As he put it, "our historical legacy is not always on good grounds with the federal government," and he conceded that it can be "very difficult to extract data from our people sometimes because of what the federal government has done to our people" in the past. But he closed by commending a great benefit of the ACS: its continual presence and its coverage of demographic information within the Navajo Nation serves to "validate our existence"; it "validates our sovereignty" by chronicling that the Navajo are and "will continue to be there on our home lands," and so the ACS is extremely valuable to the tribe.
|
From page 97... ...
• Romalewski followed up on that comment, saying that he imagined that administrative records from state and local governments would be used more frequently, but he said that these would likely be less consistent and reliable than systematic collection of ACS data. He said that some of this spottiness in records data would arise from inconsistency in collection and coding at the most local levels; even in a large metropolitan county like Suffolk County on Long Island, the county "sometimes doesn't have much say over how the individual towns collect the information," and that's "not a good situation." • Tsosie said that tribal governments like the Navajo Nation would likely have to turn to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
|
From page 98... ...
• Tsosie recalled his concern about exactly how ACS data are collected on American Indian lands at present under the mandatory collection; if it is made voluntary, "forget it, [tribal areas] won't get anything." Byers closed with some personal comments about the legislative debate on the future of the ACS.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.