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Housing Stock – Net Change

Source

Source Description

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide survey designed to provide communities with reliable and timely social, economic, housing, and demographic data every year. The ACS has an annual sample size of about 3.5 million addresses, with survey information collected nearly every day of the year. Data are pooled across a calendar year to produce estimates for that year. As a result, ACS estimates reflect data that have been collected over a period of time rather than for a single point in time as in the decennial census, which is conducted every 10 years and provides population counts as of April 1. The Census Bureau combines 5 consecutive years of ACS data to produce estimates for geographic areas with fewer than 65,000 residents. These 5-year estimates represent data collected over a period of 60 months. Because the ACS is based on a sample, rather than all housing units and people, ACS estimates have a degree of uncertainty associated with them, called sampling error. In general, the larger the sample, the smaller the level of sampling error. Data users should be careful in drawing conclusions about small differences between two ACS estimates because they may not be statistically different.

Citation: U.S. Census Bureau: UNDERSTANDING AND USING AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY DATA: WHAT ALL DATA USERS NEED TO KNOW (2018).

For more information about this source, including data collection methodology and definitions, refer to the American Community Survey data user’s website.

Methodology

The data are downloaded in text format from the U.S. Census Bureau’s FTP site for the years 2015 and 2021. The text documents are then uploaded into a SQL database. The demographics indicators are mapped using population provided for county area (Sum Level 050). Total populations are derived directly from data provided. The rate of population change is calculated using Total Households (current) – Total Households (previous) = Household Change.

For more information on the data reported in the American Community Survey, please see the complete American Community Survey 2021 Subject Definitions.

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