ACS Data Users Group

Hey All,

I'm working on some ACS microdata and found a very strange response. In Massachusetts PUMA 508 (Malden and Medford), there's a household headed by a 26 year old that reported an income of over $3.5 million, which just seems remarkably unlikely. Within the data it is the highest income household in Greater Boston, but it feels almost certainly wrong. Has anyone else run into something like this? How do you handle it?

Thanks,
Peter C

Dear Peter,

You must have made a mistake with a decimal point or something. Income is top coded meaning there is maximum possible value, anything above that is set to the maximum value. I don't think that the maximum value is $3.5 million ? What software are you using ? Household income in the the house hold level dataset. Some software merges the person level data set with the household level data. Did you add up the household income across the people in the household ?

Dave Dorer