Census Bureau plans to stop production of 3-year ACS data

Mark Mather over 9 years ago

The Census Bureau is planning to discontinue the production of all 3-year ACS data, according to their 2015 budget justification document:

"The Census Bureau proposes to terminate permanently the “3-Year Data” Product. The Census Bureau intended to produce this data product for a few years when the ACS was a new survey. Now that the ACS has collected data for nearly a decade, this product can be discontinued without serious
impacts on the availability of the estimates for these communities."

www.osec.doc.gov/.../Census_2016_CJ.pdf

There have also been some emails circulating that mention the 2015 ACS Data Users Conference has been canceled but I want to assure everyone that this is not the case!

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Cliff Cook over 9 years ago

My understanding is that this is at root a budget issue. Nonetheless, I think this is a huge loss and a real problem for medium size communities, in that 20K to 250K range, where the one year data is too unstable year to year to use for policy formulation but a five year timeframe for data is very problematic in different ways for determining public policy. In some cases five year values are not really meaningful (What is a five year average or median rent? Is that really that useful a value?). In most cases 5 year data cover too long a period of social change to give a good sense of what is happening on the ground. (Think about 2005-9 or 2008-12 where the economy underwent a major shift and resulted in a lot of tumult and dislocation.)

I have been using 3 year data since it became available as the best compromise between timeliness and accuracy. I'll have a hard time explaining this to the people I work with and for.

[Updated on 2/3/2015 4:52 PM]
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Cliff Cook over 9 years ago

My understanding is that this is at root a budget issue. Nonetheless, I think this is a huge loss and a real problem for medium size communities, in that 20K to 250K range, where the one year data is too unstable year to year to use for policy formulation but a five year timeframe for data is very problematic in different ways for determining public policy. In some cases five year values are not really meaningful (What is a five year average or median rent? Is that really that useful a value?). In most cases 5 year data cover too long a period of social change to give a good sense of what is happening on the ground. (Think about 2005-9 or 2008-12 where the economy underwent a major shift and resulted in a lot of tumult and dislocation.)

I have been using 3 year data since it became available as the best compromise between timeliness and accuracy. I'll have a hard time explaining this to the people I work with and for.

[Updated on 2/3/2015 4:52 PM]
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