ACS Data Users Group

Hello, everyone. My name is John R. Maurer I am a Data Analyst at the Pennsylvania State Data Center. I am starting this discussion with hopes that someone can explain to me why the ACS Table B11017 - Multigenerational Households is only available at the nation and state-level of geography. In the past, the U.S. Census Bureau released a U.S. county map displaying this data. I have included a link to the map below: www.census.gov/.../acsbr11-03.pd. Can anyone offer an explanation as to why this data has been suppressed below the state-level in the ACS summary product?

I suspect the issue is that there are two few cases to extrapolate to smaller geographies. I just did a quick check in Factfinder for Cambridge, MA, population around 105,000. The only instances that came up were 1 year tables from the 2008 and 2009 ACS. In both cases there was too small a sample and the tables were suppressed. This is a bit surprising since the Census recently published a paper on grandchildren living with grandparents, not exactly a rare household arrangement. There might be relevant tables available through the 2010 Census.

Thank you for your reply Cliff. I have a call into the Census Bureau to get their official response. I agree with your assessment. It does seem strange that certain tables with few cases are suppressed while others are released in the summary file.

I am posting the U.S. county map link again as I cut off the last part of the link from my previous message in case other would like to reply.

www.census.gov/.../acsbr11-03.pdf