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Using Small-Area Estimation (SAE) to Estimate Prevalence of Child Health Outcomes at the Census Regional-, State-, and County-Levels
November 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-48
In this study, we implement small-area estimation to assess the prevalence of child health outcomes at the county, state, and regional levels, using national survey data.
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The Impact of Household Surveys on 2020 Census Self-Response
July 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-24
Households who were sampled in 2019 for the American Community Survey (ACS) had lower self-response rates to the 2020 Census. The magnitude varied from -1.5 percentage point for household sampled in January 2019 to -15.1 percent point for households sampled in December 2019. Similar effects are found for the Current Population Survey (CPS) as well.
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Age, Sex, and Racial/Ethnic Disparities and Temporal-Spatial Variation in
Excess All-Cause Mortality During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Linked Administrative and Census Bureau Data
May 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-18
Research on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has highlighted substantial racial/ethnic disparities in excess mortality, but reports often differ in the details with respect to the size of these disparities. We suggest that these inconsistencies stem from differences in the temporal scope and measurement of race/ethnicity in existing data. We address these issues using death records for 2010 through 2021 from the Social Security Administration, covering the universe of individuals ever issued a Social Security Number, linked to race/ethnicity responses from the decennial census and American Community Survey. We use these data to (1) estimate excess all-cause mortality at the national level and for age-, sex-, and race/ethnicity-specific subgroups, (2) examine racial/ethnic variation in excess mortality over the course of the pandemic, and (3) explore whether and how racial/ethnic mortality disparities vary across states.
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Addressing Data Gaps:
Four New Lines of Inquiry in the 2017 Economic Census
September 2019
Working Paper Number:
CES-19-28
We describe four new lines of inquiry added to the 2017 Economic Census regarding (i) retail health clinics, (ii) management practices in health care services, (iii) self-service in retail and service industries, and (iv) water use in manufacturing and mining industries. These were proposed by economists from the U.S. Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies in order to fill data gaps in current Census Bureau products concerning the U.S. economy. The new content addresses such issues as the rise in importance of health care and its complexity, the adoption of automation technologies, and the importance of measuring water, a critical input to many manufacturing and mining industries.
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The Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs: An Update
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-46
We provide an update on the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (ASE), which is a relatively new Census Bureau business survey. About 290,000 employer firms in the private, non-agricultural U.S. economy are in the ASE sample. Its content is relatively constant over collections, allowing for comparability over time; however, each year there are approximately ten new questions in a changing topical module. Earlier topical modules covered innovation (2014) and management practices (2015). The topical module for reference year 2016 covers business advice and planning, finance, and regulations. The ASE is collected through a partnership of the Census Bureau with the Kauffman Foundation and the Minority Business Development Agency. Qualified researchers on approved projects may request access to the ASE micro data through the Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) network.
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Has Falling Crime Invited Gentrification?
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-27
Over the past two decades, crime has fallen dramatically in cities in the United States. We explore whether, in the face of falling central city crime rates, households with more resources and options were more likely to move into central cities overall and more particularly into low income and/or majority minority central city neighborhoods. We use confidential, geocoded versions of the 1990 and 2000 Decennial Census and the 2010, 2011, and 2012 American Community Survey to track moves to different neighborhoods in 244 Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs) and their largest central cities. Our dataset includes over four million household moves across the three time periods. We focus on three household types typically considered gentrifiers: high-income, college-educated, and white households. We find that declines in city crime are associated with increases in the probability that highincome and college-educated households choose to move into central city neighborhoods, including low-income and majority minority central city neighborhoods. Moreover, we find little evidence that households with lower incomes and without college degrees are more likely to move to cities when violent crime falls. These results hold during the 1990s as well as the 2000s and for the 100 largest metropolitan areas, where crime declines were greatest. There is weaker evidence that white households are disproportionately drawn to cities as crime falls in the 100 largest metropolitan areas from 2000 to 2010.
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Examining Multi-Level Correlates of Suicide by Merging NVDRS and ACS Data
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-25
This paper describes a novel database and an associated suicide event prediction model that surmount longstanding barriers in suicide risk factor research. The database comingles person-level records from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) and the American Community Survey (ACS) to establish a case-control study sample that includes all identified suicide cases, while faithfully reflecting general population sociodemographics, in sixteen USA states during the years 2005 2011. It supports a statistical model of individual suicide risk that accommodates person-level factors and the moderation of these factors by their community rates. Named the United States Multi-Level Suicide Data Set (US-MSDS), the database was developed outside the RDC laboratory using publicly available ACS microdata, and reconstructed inside the laboratory using restricted access ACS microdata. Analyses of the latter version yielded findings that largely amplified but also extended those obtained from analyses of the former. This experience shows that the analytic precision achievable using restricted access ACS data can play an important role in conducting social research, although it also indicates that publicly available ACS data have considerable value in conducting preliminary analyses and preparing to use an RDC laboratory. The database development strategy may interest scientists investigating sociodemographic risk factors for other types of low-frequency mortality.
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State and Local Determinants of Employment Outcomes among Individuals with Disabilities
March 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-21
In the United States, employment rates among individuals with disabilities are persistently low but vary substantially. In this study, we examine the relationship between employment outcomes and features of the state and county physical, economic, and policy environment among a national sample of individuals with disabilities. To do so, we merge a set of state- and county-level environmental variables with data from the 2009'2011 American Community Survey accessed in a U.S. Census Research Data Center. We estimate regression models of employment, work hours, and earnings as a function of health conditions, personal characteristics, and these environmental features. We find that certain environmental variables are significantly associated with employment outcomes. Although the estimated importance of environmental variables is small relative to individual health and personal characteristics, our results suggest that these variables may present barriers or facilitators to employment that can explain some geographic variation in employment outcomes across the United States.
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Disconnected Geography: A Spatial Analysis of Disconnected Youth in the United States
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-37
Since the Great Recession, US policy and advocacy groups have sought to better understand its effect on a group of especially vulnerable young adults who are not enrolled in school or training programs and not participating in the labor market, so called 'disconnected youth.' This article distinguishes between disconnected youth and unemployed youth and examines the spatial clustering of these two groups across counties in the US. The focus is to ascertain whether there are differences in underlying contextual factors among groups of counties that are mutually exclusive and spatially disparate (non-adjacent), comprising two types of spatial clusters ' high rates of disconnected youth and high rates of unemployed youth. Using restricted, household-level census data inside the Census Research Data Center (RDC) under special permission by the US Census Bureau, we were able to define these two groups using detailed household questionnaires that are not available to researchers outside the RDC. The geospatial patterns in the two types of clusters suggest that places with high concentrations of disconnected youth are distinctly different in terms of underlying characteristics from places with high concentrations of unemployed youth. These differences include, among other things, arrests for synthetic drug production, enclaves of poor in rural areas, persistent poverty in areas, educational attainment in the populace, children in poverty, persons without health insurance, the
social capital index, and elders who receive disability benefits. This article provides some preliminary evidence regarding the social forces underlying the two types of observed geospatial clusters and discusses how they differ.
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Co-Working Couples and the Similar Jobs of Dual-Earner Households
January 2015
Working Paper Number:
CES-15-23R
Although an increasing number of studies consider married or cohabiting couples as current, former, or potential co-workers, there is surprisingly little evidence on the extent to which couples work at the same workplace. This study provides benchmark estimates on the frequency with which opposite-sex married and cohabiting couples in the United States share the same occupation, industry, work location, and employer using Census 2000 responses linked with administrative records data. This study contains the first representative estimate of the fraction of couples that share an employer, which is in the range of 11% to 13%. These shared employers can account for much of couples' shared industry, occupation, and location of employment. Longitudinal data on the employment and residency indicates that co-working couples much more likely to have chosen the same employer than to have met at work.
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