An Evaluation of Persons per Household (PPH) Estimates Generated by the American Community Survey: A Demographic Perspective |
| |
Authors: | David A Swanson George C Hough Jr |
| |
Institution: | (1) Department of Sociology, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA;(2) Department of Sociology, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA |
| |
Abstract: | The American Community Survey (ACS) is a U.S. Census Bureau product designed to provide accurate and timely demographic and
economic indicators on an annual basis for both large and small geographic areas within the United States. Operational plans
call for ACS to serve not only as a substitute for the decennial census long-form, but as a means of providing annual data
at the national, state, county, and subcounty levels. In addition to being highly ambitious, this approach represents a major
change in how data are collected and interpreted. Two of the major questions facing the ACS are its functionality and usability.
This paper explores the latter of these two questions by examining “persons per household (PPH),” a variable of high interest
to demographers and others preparing regular post-censal population estimates. The data used in this exploration are taken
from 18 of the counties that formed the set of 1999 ACS test sites. The examination proceeds by first comparing 1-year ACS
PPH estimates to Census 2010 PPH values along with extrapolated estimates generated using a geometric model based on PPH change
between the 1990 and 2000 census counts. Both sets of estimates are then compared to annual 2001–2009 PPH interpolated estimates
generated by a geometric model based on PPH from the 2000 census to the 2010 census. The ACS PPH estimates represent what
could be called the “statistical perspective” because variations in the estimates of specific variables over time and space
are viewed largely by statisticians with an eye toward sample error. The model-based PPH estimates represent a “demographic
perspective” because PPH estimates are largely viewed by demographers as varying systematically and changing relatively slowly
over time, an orientation stemming from theory and empirical evidence that PPH estimates respond to demographic and related
determinants. The comparisons suggest that the ACS PPH estimates exhibit too much “noisy” variation for a given area over
time to be usable by demographers and others preparing post-censal population estimates. These findings should be confirmed
through further analysis and suggestions are provided for the directions this research could take. We conclude by noting that
the statistical and demographic perspectives are not incompatible and that one of the aims of our paper is to encourage the
U.S. Census Bureau to consider ways to improve the usability of the 1-year ACS PPH estimates. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|