ACS Data Users Group

Is there a way to generate a list for a specific geography (eg, place, census tract) of the detailed race etc. groups for which the new ACS release has populated tables? In practice I am finding this very difficult to determine with out wasting a lot of time clicking through data.census.gov.

Also, when I look for such tables at the tract level in my city I am not seeing any tracts listed, even before I pick a specific race/Hispanic/ancestry group. (We have a minimal number of native Americans so I don't expect to see any tribes.) Does this mean not no such tables were published for any such group in any of the tracts located in my community?

Are there any published guidelines indicating what if any are the population size cutoffs below which tables and profiles will not be published for detailed groups? I am not finding any on the ACS web pages. For my community of 118,000 +/- it appears that a group needs at least 3,000 members to have tables published.

Dear Cliff,

The Census has stopped producing detailed ancestry tables for census tracts. Here is a reference that indicates that the minimum population is 7,000 for a geography to have a detailed table. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/data/race-aian.html I use the API so that I can download tables based on some criteria that I am able to program. I can help you out with the programming.

Dave

David

I have been looking in the documentation to find that size cut off and found a reference to a national population of at least 7,000. Its unclear how this translate to the local level. Is your understanding that this figure applies top all levels of geography? That would seem to line up with what I am seeing as I look more closely at the tables this morning.

I'd be interested in learning what are you doing with the API. I think you might have my contact info.

Dear Cliff,

My reading of the webpage is that the 7000 applies to all levels of geography. This would typically rule out tracts, some city/towns (County Subdivision CSD) and perhaps some counties. There are also rules based on cell size, in which case usually the on data.census.gov they may put a ** in a cell. For the API you get a code like -666666 or -555555 etc. The codes for the API are in an earlier thread that I was from maybe a month ago.

Feel free to give me a call.

Dave

PS one way around this is to use PUMS data, which does have all the detail codes for ancestry and then "pull down" the data to the census tract using Small Area Estimation. I have a program that does this. I wrote it for some people in Virginia.