Extreme Values for Race-Specific Unemployment Rates

mirandabaumann over 1 year ago

Hi all,

New here! I've been lurking for a couple of months as I try to get myself familiarized with the quirks of working with ACS data. But I have run into a problem with some perplexing estimates in some key variables used in my research, and I am hoping someone here might have some insight.

Specifically, my research team and I are interested in the impact of county-level, race-specific characteristics on county child welfare performance indicators. Race-specific unemployment rates are expected to explain some of the variability in county performance. The problem we are running into is that the rates drawn from S2301 contain a substantial percentage of extreme estimates for county-level black rates (0s and, to a far lesser extent, 100s). See the first table below. I'm guessing this is a coverage issue, as 90% of the cases have margins of error above 23%.

I suppose my question here is three-fold:

- Am I correct to assume that many of these extreme values are due to limited coverage?

- If so, are there established best practices when using the ACS estimates to distinguish between valid and problematic estimates? I want to avoid recoding valid 0's as missing just as much as I want to avoid including problematic estimates.

- If the ACS data are simply not ideal for obtaining race-specific estimates, does anyone happen to know if there other data sources that would provide county level estimates by race?

Thanks so much for your help (and your patience!).

~ Miranda

black_unemprate — black unemployment rate (age 16+) (s2301_c04_011e)

Valid Obs	Freq.	Percent	Valid	***.
0	2306	17.86	19.86	19.86
.2	1	0.01	0.01	19.87
.3	3	0.02	0.03	19.90
:	:	:	:	:
98.2	1	0.01	0.01	98.31
100	196	1.52	1.69	100.00
Total	11609	89.89	100.00
Missing
.	1306	10.11
Total	12915	100.00

Example of Raw Data

year	state	county	name	pop16plus_uer	pop16plus_m	white_uer	white_m	black_uer	black_m	hisp_uer	hisp_m	nhwhite_uer	nhwhite_m
2011	38	101	Ward County, North Dakota	2.9	0.7	2.6	0.7	0	4.2	10.3	9.4	2.5	0.7
2011	51	113	Madison County, Virginia	5.9	2.2	6.9	2.5	0	4.9	0	24.1	6.9	2.5
2012	27	105	Nobles County, Minnesota	5.8	1.4	5.9	1.6	0	4.9	14.2	5.4	3.9	1
2011	27	105	Nobles County, Minnesota	4.6	1.1	4.4	1.1	0	5.8	10.4	4.9	3.2	0.9
2014	8	37	Eagle County, Colorado	5	1.4	4.7	1.4	0	6	8.3	3.4	3.9	1.4
2011	21	173	Montgomery County, Kentucky	8.8	1.8	9.1	1.9	0	6.4	0	15.3	9.2	1.9
2012	40	137	Stephens County, Oklahoma	7.3	1.2	7.5	1.4	0	6.6	6.3	4.7	7.5	1.4
2013	48	435	Sutton County, Texas	1.9	1.5	2.1	1.6	0	66.4	0	3.3	5.1	3.9
2011	19	59	Dickinson County, Iowa	4.8	1.4	5	1.4	0	15.3	0	26.6	5	1.4
2013	21	203	Rockcastle County, Kentucky	12	2.5	11.9	2.4	0	100	18.2	51.6	11.9	2.4
2011	31	67	Gage County, Nebraska	6.7	1.6	6.5	1.6	0	100	32.3	13.8	6.2	1.6
2011	27	41	Douglas County, Minnesota	5.6	0.9	5.3	0.8	0	58.2	0.6	1.8	5.3	0.8
2012	56	33	Sheridan County, Wyoming	3.5	1	3.3	1	0	61.8	7.1	7.3	3.3	1