Identifying Rural Communities with 2012-2015 ACS PUMS data

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

Parents
  • 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
Reply
  • 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
Children
No Data