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

I need to produce the MSA/MD statewide & non-MSA/MD Median Family Income at the census tract level (for all tracts in the US) using the ACS 5Y 2010 estimates. 

More precisely, I need to get the Median Family Income for the MSA/MD in which each tract is located. If the tract is not in a MSA/MD, this Median Family Income needs to be for all portions of the state not in MSA/MDs. The values for MSA/MD statewide non-MSA/MD Median Family Income need to originate from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2010 ACS 5 year estimates.

Any help on how to proceed will be much appreciated.

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  • 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

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

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