2009-13 American Community Survey (ACS) 5 Year Estimates were released today by the US Census Bureau. We at WCA are pretty excited about this particular release for a number of reasons.
- ACS 5 Year Estimates provide demographic and economic data for pretty much any geographical unit you could think of, including county subdivision, city, town, village, school district, zip code, and census tract.
- This is also the first year that the 5 Year Estimates will release block group data (block groups are a statistical division of census tracts) through the Factfinder website. Block group data for previous 5 year estimates had to be obtained through downloaded summary files that weren’t easy for the average user to navigate. For those who are looking for neighborhood specific data, this is a real plus (Keep in mind though, that for geographical units with small populations, which block groups generally are, the margins of error involved for these estimates can be as wide as a football field. They’re called estimates for a reason.).
- We can obtain poverty data for additional age groups: Under 6 Years, 6 to 11 Years, 12 to 17 Years, 18 to 59 Years, 60 to 74 Years, 75 to 84 Years, and 85 Years and Over. These poverty/age breakdowns are available for the 3 Year and 1 Year estimates as well, which were released earlier this year.
- We can now get information about type of health insurance by age (Table B27010).
- There is now data about college majors, with age and race breakdowns.
You can read more about the all the American Community Survey changes in 2013.
We will be looking over this data in preparation for our annual Data Bulletin, which we’ll release in the first quarter of 2015, If we find anything particularly interesting, we’ll definitely post it.