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datadesk / census-data-aggregator

Combine U.S. census data responsibly
MIT License
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Source data for approximating median household income #26

Closed ghing closed 4 years ago

ghing commented 4 years ago

Just to make sure I understand this correctly, to calculate median household income for an aggregate geography using the ACS, as shown in this example, would I use data from a table like ACS table B19001 to get the n (household counts), and min/max incomes for the ranges?

It looks like the wording of the top range of that table is "$200,000 or more". Should I just set an artificial upper bound for that? It looks like in the example and the linked PDF, they use $250,001.

Off the top of my head, this seems like it would be correct for many (most?) cases, but incorrect for very high income areas?

palewire commented 4 years ago

Yes, you really have no choice. Something has to be used. We recommend experimenting with different lower and upper bounds to assess its effect on the result.