The US House voted to defund the ACS because of various reasons. I'm not getting into that. If you have never been to the Census website and like data and MAPS! go enjoy. I deal with demographics and breathe this stuff.
I was on a conference call today discussing changes from the 2000 Census data to the 2010 Census data with regards to CRA, HMDA, and Fair Lending. I won't bore you with details about these laws, but everything gets reclassified as data comes in from the Census.
This tool is vital for understanding economic activity that is going on across the country and in local communities. It tracks all kinds of data. But most importantly it is what that data tells us.
On the call one of the presenters said something that needs to be repeated often. In comparing census tracts that are the same or very close to the same from 2000 to 2010, Middle Income tracts decreased by 10% and Low Income tracts increased by 28%.
Those numbers are shocking, but I have to warn they may not tell the whole tale because of total tract changes. I'll have to wait until everything gets released.
Without the ACS we may not know that these changes have happened. And that is what scares me about trying to get rid of the ACS. We can track so many things over the years because we have data sets that are comparable. We can track changes in the racial make-up of tracts as well as total population changes. Thanks to the ACS we get income data as well and the ACS has 1, 3, and 5 years sets so that data doesn't get stale.
Banks use this data to make sure we are in compliance with several laws and regulations. Our regulatory agencies use this data to make sure we are compliant. Everyone has access to the same data.
As we look at the economic picture in the country, it is the ACS which may give us one of the clearest views of what is happening at the local level. I am hesitant to assign motive, but without the ACS we could be blind to changes and losing data is never good.