Identifying Rural Communities with 2012-2015 ACS PUMS data

shondelle over 7 years ago

I am interested in performing a national rural analysis with 2012-2015 ACS PUMS data. The ACS PUMS documentation recommends using data from the Missouri Census Data Center (MCDC) <http://mcdc.missouri.edu/websas/geocorr14.html> to identify other geographies. The national level data downloaded from the MCDC includes state, county 2010, CBSA 2010, CBSA type, urban-rural portion. These data are then merged with 4 years of ACS data by state and puma.

Tabulations of rural areas, using CBSA type variable or the urban-rural portion, results in over 2 million missing observations. Has anyone else encountered this problem? I realize that the PUMA represents areas with populations of 100,000 or more people and a 1:1 match between PUMA:rural areas may be limited- I just didn't expect so much missing data.

While, iPUMS is a great resource, I would like to work directly with ACS data from the Census Bureau. Do any of you have other recommendations for identifying rural areas with the ACS PUMS?

Regards,

Shondelle Frederick

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Andi E over 7 years ago

Hi, Shondelle and Beth,

We recently did some analysis of rural-urban differences in Minnesota using the 2010 Rural Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) codes (defined at the census tract level): www.ers.usda.gov/.../

We did not use ACS microdata, but rather downloaded the published tract-level 5-year ACS estimates and aggregated them to the 4 broad RUCA groupings (in Part 1 of the report). We also grouped our 87 counties into 4 types based on their underlying RUCA codes (in Part 2 of the report), to assess components of population change (natural change, net migration).

Our report is available here: mn.gov/.../greater-mn-refined-and-revisited.jsp

Feel free to email me if you have further questions.

Best,
Andi

Andi Egbert, Assistant Director, MN State Demographic Center
andi.egbert@state.mn.us
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Andi E over 7 years ago

Hi, Shondelle and Beth,

We recently did some analysis of rural-urban differences in Minnesota using the 2010 Rural Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) codes (defined at the census tract level): www.ers.usda.gov/.../

We did not use ACS microdata, but rather downloaded the published tract-level 5-year ACS estimates and aggregated them to the 4 broad RUCA groupings (in Part 1 of the report). We also grouped our 87 counties into 4 types based on their underlying RUCA codes (in Part 2 of the report), to assess components of population change (natural change, net migration).

Our report is available here: mn.gov/.../greater-mn-refined-and-revisited.jsp

Feel free to email me if you have further questions.

Best,
Andi

Andi Egbert, Assistant Director, MN State Demographic Center
andi.egbert@state.mn.us
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