Arias Elizabeth, Liebler Carolyn A, Garcia Marc A, Sáenz Rogelio
National Center for Health Statistics, 3311 Toledo Road, Hyattsville, MD, 20782, USA.
Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, 1135 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Avenue S, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
SSM Popul Health. 2025 Jan 9;29:101742. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2024.101742. eCollection 2025 Mar.
Beginning with the 2020 decennial census and the 2020 American Community Survey (ACS), the U.S. Census Bureau implemented changes in question design, data processing, and coding procedures for the race and ethnicity data they collect that appear to have resulted in major data discontinuity. However, the Census Bureau has not released nor plans to release research showing the impact of these changes. We explore the impact of the Census Bureau's procedural changes on the racial and ethnic distributions of the Hispanic (generally and by country of origin) and the American Indian and Alaska Native populations, the two populations most impacted by these changes. We use the 2019 and 2021 one-year ACS public-use microdata and 2019 and 2021 NCHS mortality data to compare racial distributions and estimate and compare select demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, and mortality measures across the two years. Our results show that changes the Census Bureau implemented beginning with the 2020 decennial census and ACS appear to have had a significant impact on the comparability of Census Bureau race and ethnicity data. We find a significant data discontinuity impacting a wide variety of demographic, socioeconomic, and mortality statistics and analyses that rely on U.S. Census Bureau data as input for calculations. To mitigate these effects, methods that bridge race and ethnicity data between pre- and post-2020 census data are needed. Our research brings new attention and clarity to the race and ethnicity data discontinuity in Census Bureau data that started in 2020.
从2020年十年一次的人口普查和2020年美国社区调查（ACS）开始，美国人口普查局对其收集的种族和族裔数据在问题设计、数据处理和编码程序方面进行了更改，这些更改似乎导致了重大的数据不连续性。然而，人口普查局尚未发布也未计划发布显示这些变化影响的研究。我们探讨了人口普查局程序更改对西班牙裔（总体以及按原籍国划分）以及美国印第安人和阿拉斯加原住民人口的种族和族裔分布的影响，这两个人口群体受这些变化影响最大。我们使用2019年和2021年的一年期ACS公共使用微观数据以及2019年和2021年的国家卫生统计中心死亡率数据来比较种族分布，并估计和比较选定的人口、社会经济特征以及这两年间的死亡率指标。我们的结果表明，人口普查局从2020年十年一次的人口普查和ACS开始实施的更改似乎对人口普查局种族和族裔数据的可比性产生了重大影响。我们发现存在重大的数据不连续性，影响了各种依赖美国人口普查局数据作为计算输入的人口、社会经济和死亡率统计及分析。为了减轻这些影响，需要采用能够弥合2020年前后人口普查数据之间种族和族裔数据差距的方法。我们的研究为2020年开始的人口普查局数据中的种族和族裔数据不连续性带来了新的关注和清晰认识。
