PUMAs: What They Are And How You Can Help
During CTData’s 2021 Conference, we hosted a session dedicated to Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs). If you attended the session, we want to thank you for engaging and offering your input and suggestions. If you missed this session, read on to learn more about what PUMAs are, why they are important, what needs to be done by January 2022, and how you can help with this important process!
This post will go over the basics of PUMAs, but we encourage you to check out our PUMAs page for detailed information about PUMAs and to submit any feedback or suggestions you may have.
PUMAs: What Are They?
Defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, PUMAs are non-overlapping, statistical geographic areas that partition each state or equivalent entity into geographic areas containing no fewer than 100,000 people each. They cover the entirety of the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Census Bureau defines PUMAs for the tabulation and dissemination of decennial census and American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data.
In simpler terms, PUMAs:
Are geographies that can be used to access census data
Contain population between 100,000 and 200,000 people
Are defined every 10 years by State Data Centers
Why Are Pumas Important?
PUMAs are one of the few ways through which data users can access Public Use Microdata. Microdata contains anonymized data on the individual level and can be useful for policy and planning decisions. Public Use Microdata allows data users to cross-tabulate data from various topics while providing the option to disaggregate on a deeper level than basic, premade American Community Survey tables. Example questions could include:
What is the number of children in a county who are preschool age?
What is the number of adults who are veterans in a region among different demographic groups?
What are the migration patterns in a county?
What is the number of people who speak Arabic in different regions of the state?
How many youth in our county are not in school and not employed?
What is the percent of female heads of households earning above and below the ALICE threshold?
…and more!
PUMAs Are Important, But What Needs to Be Done?
As mentioned previously, every 10 years, the State Data Center is required to define PUMA boundaries. These boundaries can remain the same or change, depending on what the State Data Center decides each decade. As this is the first time we are going through this process, we have detailed our proposed process and potential issues on our PUMAs page. We are interested in any feedback you might have. The deadline for this process is January 2022.
Have you used PUMAs in the past? If so, what for?
What is important to you or your organization in terms of the composition of towns within each PUMA?
What other feedback and suggestions do you have? We are all ears!
As mentioned previously, you can find more detailed information about PUMAs here, as well as some of the challenges we may face as we go through this process. There is a feedback form at the bottom of every page of the PUMAs page (as well as at the bottom of this post)—please let us know if you have any feedback, suggestions, or ideas.
You can watch more of the sessions from CTData (mini) Conference 2021 at the conference hub. You can keep up with us by subscribing to the CTData newsletter and following us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.