American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Benchmark Geographies
Published ACS figures for the nation, metro areas and counties, used as the comparison values a tract is read against.
A tract figure on its own is hard to judge. Is a median rent of $1,400 high? It depends entirely on where the tract sits. This dataset supplies the answer: the same measures the American Community Survey publishes for tracts, also published for the nation, for metropolitan and micropolitan areas, and for counties.
The important property is that these are published figures, not summaries we made. The comparison value shown beside a tract is the Census Bureau's own estimate for that metro or that county, issued by the Bureau at that geography. We are not averaging a metro's tracts together to produce it.
Coverage#
The 2020–2024 ACS 5-year estimates, matching the vintage of the tract figures they are compared against, so both sides of a comparison describe the same five-year period and the same measure.
Three geographies: the United States; all 935 metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas; and all 3,222 counties and county equivalents. Micropolitan areas are included deliberately, so a tract in a small metro is compared against its own area rather than falling back to something broader. Counties cover the tracts whose county belongs to no statistical area at all.
Publication lags the present, as it does for the tract estimates — see the ACS source page for what that means in practice.
How we use it#
These are the comparison figures shown alongside a tract: the metro tick and the national tick that let a value be read as high or low rather than merely as a number. They cover the measures the ACS publishes at all three geographies. Measures drawn from other sources carry comparison figures from those sources instead.
Considerations#
A metro figure is not the typical tract in that metro. Metros contain wide internal variation, and a metro-wide median sits where the whole area's distribution puts it, which can be some distance from where most of its neighborhoods sit.
Comparisons between ACS vintages carry the Bureau's own caution against comparing overlapping periods (Comparing ACS Data).
Every estimate here carries a margin of error, as all ACS estimates do. Margins are far narrower at these geographies than at tract level, since each rests on a much larger sample.
Citation#
U.S. Census Bureau, 2020-2024 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.
U.S. Census Bureau, 2020–2024 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.
Census Bureau data are not subject to copyright. The values shown from this source are the Bureau's published estimates as issued, not figures Birdseye derives.
References#
- 1American Community Surveyhttps://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs
- 2American Community Survey 5-Year Datahttps://www.census.gov/data/developers/data-sets/acs-5year.html
- 3ACS Subject Definitionshttps://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/subject_definitions/2024_ACSSubjectDefinitions.pdf
- 4Comparing ACS Datahttps://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/guidance/comparing-acs-data.html