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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Andrew Swenson over 9 years ago

The 3-year does not provide data for all the counties in my study-area or the small block-group size Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZ) that we use for transportation modeling. The yearly offering of 5-year moving averages provides some understanding of trends and helps when I need data for an "off" year. So I would argue for a contiuation of yearly 5-year data releases.

All that said, the arguments for the timeliness of a 3-year set that are made above are persuasive and I would support the continuation of the product based on the need of those who are using it now. A part of me want to get enough samples collected each year to support a 3-year moving average and the spatial resolution we need here! :)
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Andrew Swenson over 9 years ago

The 3-year does not provide data for all the counties in my study-area or the small block-group size Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZ) that we use for transportation modeling. The yearly offering of 5-year moving averages provides some understanding of trends and helps when I need data for an "off" year. So I would argue for a contiuation of yearly 5-year data releases.

All that said, the arguments for the timeliness of a 3-year set that are made above are persuasive and I would support the continuation of the product based on the need of those who are using it now. A part of me want to get enough samples collected each year to support a 3-year moving average and the spatial resolution we need here! :)
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