Median Family Income at the tract level: MSA/MD statewide & non-MSA/MD

Joe Gisbert said:

this Median Family Income needs to be for all portions of the state not in MSA/MDs

That might be a tall order. Could there be a geographic component for "not in MSA"?

How about something like this:

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=median&t=Income%20%28Households,%20Families,%20Individuals%29&g=0100000US.310000_04000G0US01&y=2010&d=ACS%205-Year%20Estimates%20Detailed%20Tables&tid=ACSDT5Y2010.B19113&hidePreview=true

This gives MFI for all MSAs in the USA, plus MFI for all of Alabama not in MSAs, using geocomp. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to get that for all states at once, at least not in data.census.gov. You could use this, and then list all tracts within and without those areas and apply the MFIs to each. If I'm understanding you correctly.

Interestingly, "Area Outside of Metro/Micro Statistical Areas (or part)" is an available geography, but it doesn't seem to have available data for ACS. Perhaps it is available but just isn't working right?


As an aside, it's frustrating that you can't search for "median family income" at data.census.gov and get a relevant result. That seems like a pretty basic search. In fact, if I filter my search for ACS 5-year detailed tables, if I just search for "family income", it returns no results.

yeah I had to search for "median" alone. Good times.

Hi Joe and all.  I try not to make pitches for Social Explorer in this group, but we our systems allows one to get a median income for any combined area.  The way it works is that it uses the brackets for income and adds up all of the cases in each bracket and then it uses the pareto method to compute the median.  To use it one would simply need to select the counties outside the metros and it is automatic.  You would unfortunately need to do it for each state.  But this is a chronic problem with the distribution of the ACS by the Bureau.  The other point that needs to be made is the Bureau's method of computing margins of errors for income is very, very conservative.  That is to say that the errors reported for income of vastly overblown.  They multiply the standard error by a factor which is valid for non-skewed distributions.  I have yet to see a non-skewed distribution for income.  We have tested our bracket method against their published number and there is not a dime's worth of difference.  

If your organization does not have an account you can start a free trial and check this out.

Go to www.socialexplorer.com

Hey, how about HUD Income Limits? This data, which is derived through ACS, has Median Family Income at the county subdivision level, which nests within MSAs (and non-MSAs). And even though the data is presented at the county subdivision level, it represents the MSA/non-MSA data. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il.html#2013. It looks to me like the 2013 HUD data is based on 2010 ACS data.

I also ended up frustated when I saw this before posting... If that box worked, there would have been no need for the post. Thanks Bernie! 

Thanks very much for your guidance Andrew. I'll give it a look too. 

Thanks Bernie, works perfectly for my use case.