Topics

Overview

Pages describing the concepts and tables covered by the Census and American Community Survey.

Age and Sex: Throughout the American Community Survey, data is broken down by age and sex. However, there are a few tables that are focused directly on these basic statistics.
Ancestry: The ACS gathers data on self-reported ancestry, whether or not respondents were born in the United States.
Children: In the American Community Survey, there are tables specifically focused on data about children, others relating to fertility, and a good number more that are about other topics but include information about children.
Citizenship: Since its creation, the ACS has asked questions about citizenship, place of birth, and year of entry into the U.S.
Commute: The ACS asks questions about where Americans work, how they get to work, and how long their commute takes.
Computers and Internet: The ACS asks about computer use and internet access per household. The Census Bureau added these three questions in 2013 as part of the 2008 Broadband Improvement Act, which mobilized several federal agencies to collect information to support broadband expansion and access across the country.
Disability: Although the word "disability" can be complex in its definition and application, the ACS uses six questions to determine if a person has a disability. Each question asks if a person has difficulty with a specific action or function. For each of these six questions, there's a table which provides responses broken down by sex and age group.
Education and Child Care: Education data is essential to understanding how the youth and the education system of a community are fairing. This data covers kids from early childcare all the way through college enrollment. Exploring education data can help us highlight areas of not only success and growth, but also challenges the youth population faces. SDC includes education data from Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI), Great Start to Quality (GSQ), and American Community Survey (ACS) detailing early childhood childcare, academic performance 3rd grade through college enrollment, attendance, and many more.
Employment: The Census Bureau asks a number of questions about whether individuals are employed and about their occupation and industry. Information from these questions is gathered together under the tag 'employment' in this tool. There are also questions about where geographically people are employed, how they get to work, how long it takes to get to work, and similar questions, which we collect under the tag 'commute.'
Families and Households: Households are a major frame through which Census data is tabulated. Many social and economic questions make more sense when framed by the household unit rather than by individuals.
Geography
Group Quarters: The ACS has special processes for gathering and reporting data about people who live in college dormitories, nursing facilities, military barracks, and correctional facilities.
Health and Health Insurance: There are many datasets reporting on the health of residents in all communities. Exploring these datasets can help to identify opportunities and challenges for communities, governments, organizations and residents whose work may focus on the health of the local residents. Health data covers a vast array of areas including death, immunizations, elevated blood lead levels, hospital visits through Medicaid and several datasets focused on health insurance. These topics can be explored individually or combined to help understand the full picture of the health of residents in a community.
Housing: In addition to questions about people, the Census Bureau collects extensive data about housing, including costs and physical characteristics of homes.
Income and Earnings: There are many American Community Survey tables which provide information on the income of people living in the United States. Even for releases of data collected over three or five years, income data is reported in inflation-adjusted dollars for the release year.
Language: Information about which languages survey respondents speak at home and their relative proficiency in English.
Marital Status: The ACS presents data on people's current marital status, how many people's status changed in the last year, and their marital history.
Migration: How the Census deals with migration data.
Poverty: The poverty rate is the standard measure of economic distress used in the United States. Since the methodology for calculating it hasn’t been updated since the 1970s, it is often regarded as an imprecise indicator, but the poverty rate (or measures based on multiples of it, such as 185% of the poverty level) are still used in determining who qualifies for many policies. The poverty rate is still critical in understanding where residents may most benefit from various programs and supports.
Public Assistance: These tables address the topic of public assistance. The American Community Survey asks questions about receipt of food/SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) assistance and income from sources such as social security and public assistance programs.
Race and Hispanic Origin: Race is a complex issue, and no less so with Census data. A large proportion of Census tables are broken down by race.
Same-Sex Couples: How the ACS deals with same-sex relationships is changing rapidly. As laws about same-sex marriage have changed in the United States, the Census Bureau has been adapting.
Seniors: In addition to basic Census data about age, there are a small number of Census tables which focus directly on data about older Americans, and on grandparents as caregivers.
Veterans and Military: Data collected about past and present members of the U.S. Armed Forces.