SpatialNews Press Release

Census Bureau Releases Long Form-Type Data for Large U.S. Cities and Counties

factfinder.census.gov

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The Census Bureau will release the most comprehensive and detailed data on American families in 64 cities across the country on November 20. The Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS) data detail housing, language, income and other statistics.

"These data are a sampling of the interesting and important information that will be available annually when the American Community Survey is operating coast to coast," said Kathleen B. Cooper, the Commerce Department's under secretary for economic affairs. "The Census Bureau is developing new and innovative ways to tell us more about America and Americans."

The C2SS, which used the American Community Survey (ACS) methodology and questionnaire, is the largest survey ever conducted by the Census Bureau outside a decennial census. As part of a re-engineering of the 2010 census, the ACS would eliminate the need for a census long form in the future by producing up-to-date data on communities and population groups every year.

The 700,000-household survey demonstrates that long-form type data can be collected simultaneously, but separately from a decennial census. The Census Bureau plans to conduct the ACS nationwide beginning in 2003 if Congress approves funding.

Today's C2SS estimates are based on a rotating monthly sample in 2000 of about 58,000 households in 1,203 counties, plus additional households in 36 ACS test counties. Another 700 tables from the supplementary survey, which include versions by race for the nation, states, District of Columbia and nearly all cities and counties of 250,000 or more, are scheduled for release this winter.

The C2SS data illustrate how some aspects of the country changed during the 1990s at the national and state levels. However, the Census Bureau demographers recommended that comparisons not be made at the substate levels between C2SS estimates and the 1990 census because the impact of methodological differences and the omission of group quarters populations from C2SS is magnified for substate areas. Rather, cities or counties of 250,000 people or more should be compared within the C2SS data set, they said, either with estimates for their state or with other substate areas released today. An important next step in Census Bureau testing will be to study these data in relation to Census 2000 long-form findings, which will be released next summer.

C2SS data can be accessed through the Census Bureau's new search-and-retrieval database, American FactFinder, at http://factfinder.census.gov. C2SS operational information, narrative and tabular profiles for all summary levels and rankings at the state, county and place levels also may be found at http://www.census.gov/c2ss/www.

Statistics from sample surveys are subject to sampling and nonsampling error. The Census 2000 Supplementary Survey uses the 2000 Master Address File (MAF) as the base for its sample.

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Nov 26, 2001 Jun 26, 2002