Group quarter population

Hi everyone,

This might seem like a simple task, but I was wondering how can I go about excluding the GQ pop from tables created in the data.census site? I could subtract the G pop, for a specific geography, from the total population but would that also exclude them from other variables, such as total Hispanics, etc?

Thanks!

  • Good morning Grigoris -

    Yes--if you can find a GQ table to pair up with the total population table, subtracting the two will give you an estimate of household population for that group (e.g. Hispanic/Latino total minus Hispanic/Latino GQ = Hispanic/Latino household population.)

    Unfortunately this only works for a limited set of demographic characteristics since not every characteristic is published for group quarters.

    If there's a demographic group you're looking for and can't find, there are a couple of options:

    Try the Microdata Access Tool https://data.census.gov/mdat/#/ (still in beta version, I think, but worth a try!)

    IPUMS https://usa.ipums.org/usa/sda/ (requires registration, but is free and incredibly useful)

    Or download PUMS data and extract the variables you want using a statistical programming platform

  • Thank you for the reply, it's very helpful!