Behind the Numbers: The PRB blog on population, health, and the environment

by Mark Mather, associate vice president, Domestic Programs 

One of the many joys of being a demographer is getting to work with new data. Starting on December 9, there will be a new source of information for small geographic areas in the United States. It’s called the American Community Survey, and the December release will include the first detailed characteristics of people living in “midsize population areas” with 20,000 to 64,999 people. About one-third of the 3,141 counties nationwide have populations in this range.

The Census Bureau will release ACS numbers in the form of three-year estimates, covering the period from 2005-2007. By 2010, the Census Bureau will have collected enough data to produce annual five-year estimates for even smaller geographic areas. ACS data will replace the information that was previously collected through the Census Bureau’s decennial census long form.

Want more information? The Census Bureau is producing a series of handbooks to help different audiences make sense of the ACS and how it can be used. The first of these, A Compass for Understanding and Using American Community Survey Data:  What General Data Users Need to Know, was authored by PRB staff and is available on the Census Bureau’s website. Additional handbooks and training materials will be available in the coming months.

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