American Community Survey: Household Income Down from 2008 to 2009

The U.S. Census Bureau released the 2009 American Community Survey (ACS) one year estimates on Tuesday, giving the country a look at how areas with over 65,000 population are doing since the recession started. The numbers weren't very pretty as far as poverty and income levels go for the country and the Austin area for that matter. The Austin American-Statesman has a good article which outlines some of the troubling statistics here.

For the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA (Austin MSA), the median household income estimate dropped about $2,500 from the 2008 number. Since the ACS is a survey and subject to sampling errors, the true magnitude of the drop is hard to measure, but it is safe to say that the drop is considered statistically significant at the 90% confidence interval. Households brought home less money last year than the year before.

The chart below shows both the estimate and the upper and lower confidence interval for the median household income from 2005-2009 with adjustment for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator. Note the upper confidence bound for the 2009 estimate is below the lower confidence bound for the 2008 estimate.

The Austin MSA's median household income remains above both the figure for TX ($48,259) and the US ($50,221), but the drop seems to be slightly more severe as both the state and national household income estimates only dropped by slightly less just over $1,000. Although, some of the difference could be explained by margin of error.

We've also pulled the Median household income figures by Race/Ethnicity. It is very hard to definitively say that one group has seen a disproportionate drop in income levels based on the fact that the margin of errors of the survey can be quite large. But, it still shows the income disparity between race/ethnic groups pretty clearly.

We've updated our information Clearinghouse with the data profiles for communities that have 2009 ACS data available, you can get that information here.

This is just the beginning of what will be a data filled Fall and Winter! There will be two more American Community Survey releases by January 2011. The 5-year ACS data will come out in December, giving communities with 20,000 or less new socio-economic Census data for the first time since the Census 2000 numbers. The 3-year ACS estimates will come out in January 2011 and of course the big Census 2010 redistricting file (population counts down to the block level) will be released sometime in February or March.

Chris Ramser