Abstract
The American Community Survey (ACS) is designed to provide current estimates of the demographic, housing, and socioeconomic characteristics of the United States population. However, little is known about the demographic stability of the ACS estimates, especially for demographic subgroups such as race and Hispanic origin. In this presentation, we use data from the 2000 to 2014 ACS files to focus on the following research question: How stable are the ACS estimates in measuring change over time in the characteristics of the population and housing in a given area? Although the ACS has only been available for all geographies since 2005, the longer time series of this study is made possible by incorporating ACS estimates for 2000 to 2004 from selected “test site” counties where ACS estimates had been developed. For selected characteristics, we compare ACS estimates with previous census benchmarks from 1990, 2000, and 2010. In addition, we include comparisons across the single-year and multi-year (3-year and 5-year) estimates. Statistical and demographic measures summarize the stability across the time series of estimates, across demographic groups, and across geography.
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Robinson, J.G., Jensen, E.B. (2020). A Demographic Evaluation of the Stability of American Community Survey (ACS) Estimates for ACS Test Sites: 2000 to 2011. In: Singelmann, J., Poston, Jr, D. (eds) Developments in Demography in the 21st Century. The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26492-5_3
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