ACS Data Users Group

We are collecting town level data for the state of Connecticut and wanted to construct a measure of racial segregation in each town. I was planning to create a measure of non-white share of the population [(total population - white population)/total pop], and have run into a snag. As one might expect, not every town has enough racial diversity to trust the margins of error for the non-white population count. How have others handled this issue--when some towns have a reasonable margin of error while others are too large to trust?

Thanks,

Rachel Leventhal-Weiner

Connecticut Voices for Children

You might consider using 2010 Census data, rather than ACS data. While I am familiar with Connecticut communities, it seems likely that, for most, the change since 2010 in the proportion of white/non-white population is small. Since 2010 Census data is, in theory, from a 100% count of the population there is no margin of error as such.