This list covers only issues and language specific to the Housing Needs Assessment Tool. Otherwise, information on all other data sources can be found here .
Demographic data for 2007-2011, 2012-2016, and 2017-2021 is from the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ American Community Survey (ACS). This survey replaced the long form from the Decennial Census in 2010. Rather than distributing both a short survey and the long form in 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau instead distributed the short survey as the Decennial Census. Beginning in 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau began administering the new ACS Survey, which is comprised of many of the questions from the old Census long form. With the release of the 2005-2009 ACS data, the ACS data includes small geographic estimates. The ACS data provides demographic, social, economic and housing characteristic estimates on a rolling basis, whereas the 2010 and 2020 Decennial Census provides counts of the population and their basic characteristics (sex, age, race, Hispanic origin, and homeowner status) as a snapshot in time. The move from the long form on the Decennial Census to the ACS format allows data consumers to enjoy annually updated detailed population characteristics, rather than having to wait for the Decennial Census data release. The ACS differs from the Decennial Census in that it is not an enumeration (complete count) of the population, however. Instead, the Census Bureau collects ACS data from a sample of the population, and it provides a margin of error for every ACS estimate. Margins of error are not shown on PolicyMap, but users are encouraged to visit the Census’ website with questions about ACS estimates shown on PolicyMap.
Throughout this report unless otherwise noted, all race categories in the report include people of Hispanic ethnicity, and all categories described as “Hispanic” include Hispanic people of any race. Race categories were chosen to ensure consistency among categories across the entire report.
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Currently we use ACS 2016-2020 5-year data to get the share of people below poverty in each tract and use HUD and LIHTC data from 2020.
PolicyMap worked with Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Solutions team to develop these estimates.
A neighborhood’s poverty rate–calculated as the share of a given census tract’s residents that have incomes at or below the federal poverty level–is a commonly used proxy for overall neighborhood quality and access to educational or economic mobility opportunities. Neighborhood poverty rates of 30 to 40 percent or higher are typically considered high and potentially detrimental to individual and family health and well-being, while neighborhood poverty rates at or below ten percent are associated with a range of positive long-term outcomes for adults and children.
(Ellen and Turner, 1997; Jargowsky, 2003; Chetty, Hendren and Katz, 2018.)
Chetty, Hendren & Katz 2018: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20150572
Ellen and Turner 1997: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10511482.1997.9521280
Jargowsky 2003: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jargowskypoverty.pdf
PolicyMap and Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Solutions created these reliability flags by calculating the coefficient of variation for PUMS indicators. These flags signal to the users of the Housing Needs Assessment Tool when the PUMS indicators should be used with caution due to small population sizes. Estimates that are “reliable” will have standard errors that are 15% or less of the estimate. Estimates labeled as “use with caution” will have standard errors between 15% and 30% of the estimate. Estimates with standard errors greater than 30% of the estimate will be suppressed.
Data reliability flags were determined based on the US Census’ documentation on Accuracy of the Data (link “Accuracy of the Data” here: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/pums/accuracy/2016_2020AccuracyPUMS.pdf/ ).
PolicyMap worked with Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Solutions team to develop this index.