Demographics and Educational Attainment

A guide to understanding American Community Survey statistics on educational attainment by race and ethnicity
An important objective for communities pursuing the Talent Dividend Prize is to look to raise the educational attainment of all racial and ethnic groups. Some of the greatest opportunities for improving attainment lie in groups that have traditionally been underserved and the least likely to advance in post-secondary education. This guide aims to help participants in the Talent Dividend Prize to understand and use the data from the Census Bureaus American Community Survey to assess educational attainment by race and ethnicity in their communities. The American Community Survey is an annual survey conducted by the Census Bureau, which asks a wide range of questions about the demographic, social, and economic characteristics of American households. The ACS has replaced the long form survey that used to be conducted as part of the decennial census. Among the questions that the Census asks is the highest level of education completed by persons 18 and older. This question serves as the basis for ACS estimates of educational attainment. While this data is not used to determine the winner of the Talent Dividend Prize, it is highly useful in understanding the level of educational attainment in your community and where opportunities lie to work with particular demographic groups to improve attainment. (The winner of the Talent Dividend Prize will be determined by the percentage increase in the population-adjusted number of college degrees awarded, as reported in IPEDS, and as further explained in the Talent Dividend Prize materials.) Our Talent Dividend Attainment reports present aggregate data for all adults showing the fraction of the population 25 and older that has completed different levels of education. The American Community Survey is a survey of a random sample of U.S. households. About 1.9 million households complete the survey each year. Because it is a survey, rather than a complete count of the population, the results reported in the ACS are subject to a margin of error. The size of the margin of

error for any reported data point depends on the number of persons answering the question. Data are produced annually, with about a nine-month lag. The most recent data are for the 2011 calendar year.

Census Race and Ethnicity Classifications

The American Community Survey asks respondents two different questions about their race and ethnic background. Respondents are asked whether they identify their race and whether they are of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin. The two ACS questions are show below.

Notice that respondents can identify themselves as multi-racial or as belonging to some other race than those listed. The Census Bureau tabulates the answers to these questions into a series of categories and summarizes statistical data for a

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variety of geographical areas (including states, metropolitan areas, counties and places), using these categories. The major census categories that are reported for race are as follows: White Black/African American Asian Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Alaskan Native American/Indian Other Race Multi-Racial

The Census Bureau also combines the answers to the race question with answers to the Hispanic/Latino question to further disaggregate the population by race and ethnicity. The largest combined racial ethnic categories are as follows: Non-Hispanic White Black/African American Hispanic/Latino of any race Asian

ACS Estimates and the Confidence Interval

When examining educational attainment data for different racial and ethnic groups, it is important to pay attention to the margin of error, also called the confidence interval of the estimate. Because the ACS is based on a samplerather than a complete enumeration of the population, as in the case of the Decennial Censusthe published results from this survey are subject to a statistical confidence interval. The size of the confidence interval depends on the number of people included in the survey. The confidence interval is smaller for larger numbers of persons included in the survey. Thus, for questions about the entire American population, the confidence interval of the survey is very small. For the nation as a whole, the four-year college attainment rate for adults is estimated to be 28.2% with a confidence interval of plus or minus 0.1%. For the New York Metropolitan Area, the confidence interval is plus or minus 0.2%. For Peoria, Illinois, the confidence interval is 1.1%, and for Pahrump, Nevada, it is 13.4%. The larger confidence intervals for less populous areas are due to the fact that sample sizes are smaller.

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The same principlethe smaller the population in a sub-group, the larger the confidence intervalholds for racial and ethnic sub-groups of the population as well. So we have relatively small confidence intervals for large racial/ethnic subgroups, and relatively large confidence intervals for the least well represented racial/ethnic groups in each metropolitan area. In some cases, there are so few persons in a racial or ethnic group in a metro area that the sampling results are not statistically significant. For example, if a particular racial/ethnic group has only 100 persons in a particular metropolitan area, it is most likely that only one person would complete an ACS survey. The results from one survey are unlikely to be statistically representative for an entire group. To show how much variation there is in the size of different racial/ethnic groups, and consequently how this affects the precision of ACS-based estimates of educational attainment, the following table shows the number of adults (25 and older) in each racial/ethnic group nationally and the confidence interval of the four-year college attainment rate for that group. For the most numerous group (non-Hispanic whites), the confidence interval is about one-tenth of one percent. For the smaller groups, it is one percent or more. Population of Principal Racial/Ethnic Groups and Confidence Interval of the Estimate of the Four-Year College Attainment Rate, United States, 2010 Population 25 and Older Confidence Interval

Race/Ethnic Group White Alone, Not Hispanic or Latino Hispanic or Latino Black or African American Alone Asian Alone Some Other Race, Alone Two or More Races American Indian, Alaska Native Alone Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Alone

139,027,540 26,466,221 23,169,928 9,815,058 8,213,833 3,092,379 1,468,054 290,797

0.1% 0.5% 0.5% 0.4% 1.1% 1.1% 1.9% 5.0%

Source: American Community Survey To show how the difference in confidence intervals affects the reliability and precision of our estimates of educational attainment for these groups, we show the ACS estimate of the four-year college attainment and its confidence interval for each racial/ethnic group.

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Four-Year College Attainment Rates and Confidence Intervals for Principal Racial/Ethnic Groups, United States, 2010

This chart shows the four-year college attainment rate for all adults, 25 and older, in each major racial/ethnic group. The percentage figure shown on the chart for each group is the mid-point of the ACS estimate for that group. The length of the vertical line next to each percentage figure is the confidence interval for that group. Groups are ordered form left to right in descending order based on their estimated college attainment rates. Short lines mean small confidence intervals. Example: The estimated four-year college attainment rate of non-Hispanic whites is 31.1 percent with a confidence interval of 0.1%, meaning that we can be 90% confident that the actual value for the population is between 31.0 percent and 31.2 percent. The value for Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders is 14.6 percent, but the confidence interval is 5.0 percent, meaning that the 90 percent confidence interval for this group is somewhere between 9.6 percent and 19.6 percent. As a practical matter, what this means is that the survey data arent sufficiently precise to tell us whether Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are more or less likely than Blacks or Hispanics to have completed a four-year degree.

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Metropolitan Area Estimates for Different Demographic Groups

These are the confidence intervals for the national dataand the confidence intervals for smaller geographies are correspondingly higher. Consequently, for small racial/ethnic groups in smaller metropolitan areas, the confidence interval of the estimate of educational attainment can have a wide confidence interval. The American Community Surveys three-year pooled data for 2008 through 2010 is our source of estimates of educational attainment for different racial and ethnic groups in participating Talent Dividend metro areas. Pooling three years of data increases the sample size for each city, effectively shrinking the confidence interval of the estimate. The following table shows the confidence interval of the estimate of the four-year college attainment rate for the Core-based Statistical Areas reported by the Census Bureau. Core-based Statistical Areas include both metropolitan and micropolitan areas. The Census Bureau reports data for CBSAs for particular ethnic groups only if there are enough respondents in each ethnic group to produce statistically valid results for that entire group. So, for example, only 22 CBSAs had enough Pacific Islander residents in 2008-2010 to produce statistically valid estimates. For more populous groups, the confidence interval of the four-year college attainment rate is higher. Of 368 CBSAs for which the Census Bureau reports data for Non-Hispanic Whites, 360 CBSAs have a confidence interval of smaller than 10 percent, and 228 have a confidence interval of less than 5 percent. But for less populous racial/ethnic groups, very few CBSAs have small confidence intervals. Thus while 240 MSAs have reported data on multi-racial persons educational attainment, only 21 have a confidence interval of less than 10 percent and only 3 have a confidence interval of less than 5 percent. For Native Americans and Alaska Natives, only 1 CBSA has a confidence interval of less than 10 percent; and for Native Americans/Alaska Natives and Pacific Islanders, no CBSA has an error rate of 5 percent.

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Summary of Confidence Intervals for Four-Year College Attainment Rates for Core-based Statistical Areas (CBSAs), 2008-2010 American Community Survey, CBSA's Reported by Census Racial/Ethnic Group Non-Hispanic White Black/African American Hispanic/Latino Asian Multi-Racial Pacific Islander Native Alaskan/American Indian Other 368 492 520 244 240 22 134 217 Confidence Interval for Four-Year College Attainment Rate Smaller Than 10% 360 71 59 68 21 0 1 15 5% 228 19 24 26 3 0 0 3

Because of the wide confidence intervals associated with Census Bureau data on educational attainment for Native Americans/Alaskan Natives, Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, Multi-Racial, and Other Race our Talent Dividend Demographic Reports for specific metropolitan areas do not present ACS data for these groups. Talent Dividend communities looking to assess the educational status of these groups are better advised to look at national data for these racial/ethnic groups to estimate their educational attainment. Hispanic/Latino Adult Population, Four-year College Attainment Rate and Confidence Interval, Selected Metropolitan Areas, 2008-10 American Community Survey Four-year College Attainment Rate 10.2% 23.6% 10.5% 18.4% 10.9% 24.9%

Metro Area Los Angeles Miami Dallas/Fort Worth Boston Tulsa Cincinnati

Population, 25 and older 3,110,022 1,544,187 861,110 214,713 35,730 25,592

Confidence Interval 1.8% 1.7% 3.0% 5.2% 15.4% 10.9%

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For large metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles and Miami, where the Hispanic/Latino population exceeds 1 million persons, the confidence interval of the estimated four-year college attainment rate is relatively lowless than 2 percent. But for smaller metropolitan areas with a smaller Hispanic/Latino population, the confidence intervals are much wider. In Tulsa and Cincinnati, two metro areas with fewer than 50,000 Latinos, the confidence interval is greater than 10 percent. In the case of Tulsa, the confidence interval implies that the actual share of Hispanic/Latino adults with a four-year degree is somewhere between 0 percent and 26.3 percent. Users of ACS data on educational attainment by racial/ethnic sub-group should pay special attention to the confidence interval of these estimates in interpreting results. For more information about ACS data and interpreting single-year and multi-year estimates, visit the Census website: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/guidance_for_data_users/guidance_main/ Support for the Talent Dividend Prize provided by:

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Sample Demographic Report for a Metropolitan Area

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