12/20/2010 New Releases from the U.S. Census Bureau

These are very exciting times for anyone dealing with Census Data – the Bureau is releasing 1) the first set of 5-year ACS Census Tract-level data, 2) new TIGER files for the 2010 Census, and 3) the first release of Census 2010 data, specifically to be used for House of Representative Redistricting.

On Tuesday, December 14, 2010, the US Census Bureau announced the release of the first set of 5-Year American Community Survey Estimates:

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/cb10-cn90.html

This “5-Year data set” is important because it is the first set with data at the Census Tract-level, allowing the first set of “official Census data” since of the release of the Census 2000 data. At this time, it is not known which Federal Regulators will be using this data. Regardless of any “mandatory use”, it is essential to become familiar with these data and their method-of-distribution, because this is how the US Census Bureau will disseminate the Census 2010 data (at least that data that had formerly been associated with Summary File 3 [income and housing variables, for example]).

Wednesday, Dec. 15 saw a number of newspaper articles and maps about the data, generally focusing on the growth of Hispanic population in the past few years.

The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/us/15census.html

The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/14/AR2010121404031.html

The Chicago Sun-Times
http://www.suntimes.com/news/2850885-418/data-according-percent-census-integration.html

The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/12/15/a_revealing_look_at_the_population_in_mass/

The Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013680231_census15m.html

This map shows Census Tracts in the Fort Lauderdale, FL area. Comparing the just-released Median Family Income (in 2009 inflation-adjusted dollars) numbers for Census Tracts with the historical 1999 Median Family Income numbers from Census 2000, it can be seen that although most Florida Census Tracts had modest increases, some had relatively-large increases (more than a 40% increase), and some even had declining Median Family Income numbers (shaded red on the map):