Abstract
This chapter explores the possibility of using administrative records to produce sub-county, municipal-level population estimates. Geocoding of vital records data is combined with IRS summary statistics on filers and dependents at the zip-code level to produce two sets of vintage 2010 Component 1 estimates for all 103 municipalities within the State of New Mexico; one made with no remediation for incomplete geocoding and the other remediated for observed biases in geocoding experiments conducted at the zip-code level. These estimates are compared against the results of the 2010 Census using an ex-post-facto evaluation strategy and standard measures of error and bias. The performance of the non-remediated and remediated estimates are compared to a null model of holding the 2000 Census constant and to a vintage 2010 set of estimates produced by the U.S. Census Bureau using their distributive housing unit method (D-HUM). The results suggest that spatial remediation does little to improve accuracy at the municipal level, and although both sets of component estimates represented significant improvements over the Census 2000 constant estimates, neither out-performed the (D-HUM) procedure, which was considerably more accurate and less biased–especially within the most rapidlygrowing municipalities. While the production of the component method-based estimates might permit the estimation of sub-county components of change, the results of this research suggest that this potential improvement would come at the cost of overall accuracy.
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Acknowledgements
This research was funded in part by support from the U.S. Census Bureau, RFQ 10-002245RT (Services to Support 2010 Postcensal Estimates Program). The paper was greatly improved by the comments of Howard Hogan, Chief Demographer of the U.S. Census Bureau, and Paul Zandbergen, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of New Mexico. The paper also benefitted greatly from the comments of two anonymous referees. Ongoing suggestions from colleagues including Stan Smith, David Swanson, Nazrul Hoque, Mohammed Shahidullah, Eddie Hunsinger, Jan Vink, Webb Sprague, Qian Tsai, Jeff Hardcastle, RisaProehl, Matt Hesser, Susan Strate, Nicholas Nagle, Joe Francis, Warren Brown, Ken Hodges and others were valued. Ongoing and numerous comments, insights, and suggestions on population estimates research were provided by members of the Federal State Cooperative Program on Population Estimates and by Census Bureau staff especially including Jason Devine, Victoria Velkoff, Tiffany Yowell, and Rodger Johnson.
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Baker, J., Alcántara, A., Ruan, X., Ruiz, D., Crouse, N. (2015). Sub-County Population Estimates Using Administrative Records: A Municipal-Level Case Study in New Mexico. In: Hoque, M., B. Potter, L. (eds) Emerging Techniques in Applied Demography. Applied Demography Series, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8990-5_6
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