American Community Survey (ACS) Data

We’ve completely replaced our Nielsen estimates and projections with a full suite of American Community Survey data now available for FREE on PolicyMap! You can now see indicators such as mode of transportation to work, homeownership by race, and employment by industry all the way down to the block group level for the Census’ most recent estimate, 2005-2009. As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, the American Community Survey data that you now see on PolicyMap replaces much of the Decennial Census data. In other words, this time around, the Census 2010 data only has a few indicators, and the rest of those that you previously accessed from the Summary File 3 are now captured in the ACS.

That said, last week the Census released its final 2010 Census Summary File 1 with a few indicators in addition to what we already show on PolicyMap with the headcount numbers. Whenever the 2010 Census data is available for a given indicator, we’ll show it. Otherwise, we show the American Community Survey indicator for 2005-2009, in order to provide you with the most current Census data available.

Our ACS data is available to you completely FREE through all of PolicyMap’s features: maps, tables, reports, and analytics. Please contact us if you have any questions about it. We know that the Census’ (and our) transition to the ACS can be confusing, and we want to be sure our users understand exactly why we show the indicators we do.