The 2025 ACS Data Users Conference will now be a one-day conference—held virtually—on May 29, 2025

  • RE: how often does ZIP not equal ZCTA?

    Hi Joe, thanks for responding. Nearly infinite they may be, but the Census Bureau knows who they are and what their ZIPs and ZCTAs are. Presumably this knowledge is behind their "most instances" statement.

    I have a large dataset of people…

  • Near Poverty

    I'm looking to classify persons as being in "near poverty" As I understand, this is usually defined as a having an income above 100% of the poverty level with some upper cutoff, for example 125%.  I also understand that there is no uniform…

  • RE: Defining Hispanic

    If a person checks any box but "no" then they are counted as Hispanic. There are other tables in the ACS which report on specific origin, specifically B03001 and C03001.

    It would be a survey completion error if someone checked "No, not of hispanic…

  • RE: Comparing 2005-9 ACS 5 year with 2010-14 ACS 5 year

    Hi Joe,

    Unfortunately, I don't have any ideas, but your post brings up some questions that might spark ideas. My first thought is this: Would the population controls for 2009 and 2010 data be different in the 2009-2013 PUMS file? Or did they adjust them…

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  • Units in Structure

    I am preparing a report for Arapahoe County using 2015 and 2010 ACS data. In the "units in structure" table for census tracts, I noted a large number of negative numbers for total housing unit change from 2010 to 2015. Census staff found an error note…

  • RE: ZCTA-level population estimates for 12-15 year-olds

    To get more specific with the data, you'll have to make a tradeoff on another item. Beyond realizing that certain zip codes are not going to have many people of certain races/ethnicities and that some zips are just low populated overall, you're going…

  • RE: Calculating median earnings in PUMS

    Do you have access to statistical software (R, SAS, Stata)? If you do, you would want to download the PUMS data the way you need them (ipums.org, in my opinion, provides the best customizable environment to do this: you can easily select just the variables…

  • Identifying small property landlords in PUMS

    Hi -

    I was looking at this Urban Institute blog post: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/owners-and-renters-62-million-units-small-buildings-are-particularly-vulnerable-during-pandemic

    I was interested in reproducing it using PUMS data for Cambridge, MA…

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