ACS Data Users Group

Trying to find Ed attainment. There are lots of people who graduate at 21,22,23,24. (a few Sheldon Coopers at 12 etc.) So how can I find the level of education for any area (State, County)? For Enrollment S1401 gives me "3 years or older" which works great, but I'm looking for Attainment.

Thanks in advance (I looked for over an hour before I posted).

Tom

PUMS variable SCHL

Thanks, I assume that means there is no such field in ACS and therefore none at the county level (what I'm trying for). Another disheartening failure of the Census Bureau. Wow. We have 2 months before the ACS5. We need to have them make the update to include this before then. Is it Donna Daily who owns this? What's the process for change? I guess I'll start with Mark Mather.

You actually think you can just demand the Bureau add tables or variables? With just 2 months' notice, even?

Have you tried these tables:

B14005
SEX BY SCHOOL ENROLLMENT BY EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT BY EMPLOYMENT STATUS FOR THE POPULATION 16 TO 19 YEARS
Universe: Population 16 to 19 years

B15001
SEX BY AGE BY EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT FOR THE POPULATION 18 YEARS AND OVER
Universe: Population 18 years and over

Check out the documentation. I find it easy for me to just pull up the table shell excel file and do a Find All for a key word (in this case "attainment") then look through the available tables.

Table Shells are found here:
www.census.gov/.../table-shells.html

Thanks for the input. I have the shell and tables and even built my own hybrid table, so I can sort find, etc. I do this first. Then on a potential table to use, I download the column-metadata for it and choose all potential fields then pull the data from an API to see if there is data for that field (sometimes it's blank). I then have valid fields for that table (valid for the county level). I do this by table type (because the API format varies by type). I've spent 10-plus hours on subject tables so far this weekend. I then put all the valid subject table fields into one API call (max is 50 fields) so I can pull down all valid fields for the subject tables I want. B14005 does not have data at the county level. B15001 has valid data not included in the 25 and over (so it's a missing piece which is great). However, with thousands of tables, it's possible to build almost anything. Ed is a very basic and important measure there should be a field for it without searching for all the pieces to hopefully build the total measure. I think it should match enrollment that uses Age 3 or higher, and actually, there should be a top level with no age limit at all for both enrollment and attainment with breakout by age, race etc etc.

So.... I think Census data is very important and has a direct impact on many lives. Has some shortcomings which are worth fighting to get fixed. And in these cases, I think it's an easy fix as the raw data is already there. Trying to make the world a slightly better place, not just complaining. Offering no offense to anyone.

JamiRae. As a look at more and more tables, table names themselves are not a great search source. Fields for Ed also exist in a table without such a name and sometimes they are exactly what you want. Is there a file with ALL table names and field names? This would be much more helpful although still not a home run as some fields have names like "Total Population" when in fact its Total Population of people in the job market or something like that and you would never know that just by looking at the field name.

The table shells contain all the field names and table names for the ACS data. If you want every single table from every single Census data set, that does not exist as far as I know. If it helps, here's a modified Appendices file where I added an "Appendix C" that has the tables and field names in there for the 2020 ACS (a modified form of the "Table Shells") file:
https://gisdiva.com/downloads/acs2020-5yr/ACS_2020_SF_5YR_Appendices.xlsx