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

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!
Parents
  • This is a pretty big loss to the ACS program, but the dissemination piece of the ACS program struck me as pretty daunting. They turnaround the data really quickly and for lots of geographies.

    I think if the Census Bureau follows through with this "cost-reduction" plan they won't start it back up. But, they aren't losing the underlying data unlike other cuts federal program make where they cut the sample, variables, etc. This could be resurrected.

    So, someone could propose to do this for the Census Bureau via an RDC, but it is a big job. It isn't just a 1-person job and the Census Bureau would want to make sure of quality control, which would use personnel and $$.
Reply
  • This is a pretty big loss to the ACS program, but the dissemination piece of the ACS program struck me as pretty daunting. They turnaround the data really quickly and for lots of geographies.

    I think if the Census Bureau follows through with this "cost-reduction" plan they won't start it back up. But, they aren't losing the underlying data unlike other cuts federal program make where they cut the sample, variables, etc. This could be resurrected.

    So, someone could propose to do this for the Census Bureau via an RDC, but it is a big job. It isn't just a 1-person job and the Census Bureau would want to make sure of quality control, which would use personnel and $$.
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