Hello,
I am looking to find annual data on the foreign born population in California’s counties. I am using the CPS. Currently I have the following: row: county. column: nativity(5). control: year. filter: statefip(6). weight: sdawt. When I run this table, it only provides me with 25 counties, instead of all 58. Why is this happening, and how can I get the data I am looking for? Also, am I using the correct weight?
Thank you.
Many counties are not identified in the public use CPS data in order to protect respondent privacy. I would recommend using IPUMS NHGIS data for your purposes. IPUMS NHGIS provides summary data from the U.S. census, American Community survey, and other data sources, aggregated at a variety of geographic levels, including county. The pre-constructed tables are useful for determining the population characteristics of small geographic areas like counties. See this brief video tutorial for an introduction to using the IPUMS NHGIS data finder to search for the tables you are interested in based on the geographic level, year(s), and topic(s).
By searching for summary tables related to nativity and place of birth at the county level from the 2018-2022 ACS, I’m able to find several tables that you may find useful. For instance, Table B05012 Nativity in the United States is a county-level table that reports the number of individuals in each county that are native born versus foreign born.
Note that annual county-level estimates are only available from NHGIS for counties with populations of at least 65,000, which is why I selected the 5-year data.
While IPUMS NHGIS does not offer an online data analysis tool, the data are relatively straightforward to analyze and understand in Microsoft Excel, if you prefer to not use a statistical software package. If you create a data extract that includes the table I highlighted above, you will be able to get a .csv file to open in Excel that lists each county and its native and foreign born populations (be sure to select comma delimited file format when you check out your data cart).
Thank you so much for your reply. I completely forgot to mention that I am looking for/trying to create a time series with this information, preferably starting around 1980 to the present. I tried using IPUMS NHGIS, and I found a table titled: Persons by Nativity [2]. The extract only gave me data on foreign born for 1980, 1990, and 2000. Do you think this is the best I can get?
Thank you again for taking the time. This is my first time using IPUMS, and I really appreciate the help.
Thank you for your patience in awaiting a reply.
You can use the decennial census-based tables from 1980, 1990, 2000, and the 5-year ACS-based tables from 2005 through 2022 to create a time series for the period of 1980 to present. When using the 5-year ACS-based tables, you could opt to minimize overlap between the years included (e.g., use the 2005-2009 5-year table and the 2010-2014 5-year table), or you could use overlapping tables, which would be similar to calculating a 5-year moving average (e.g., use the 2005-2009 5-year table, the 2006-2010 5-year table, and so on). Because county-level data from NHGIS are only available for counties with 65,000 or more residents in the 1-year ACS data, the 5-year tables will be your best bet if you hope to study all of California’s counties.
Thank you for your reply. I understand that the CPS does not provide data on certain counties due to privacy reasons. Is there any possible way to access this data? I am working with a professor from University of California, Davis, and we are willing to commit to maintaining privacy. We are happy to sign any forms or go through any procedures IPUMS would like to guarantee this. Would this be possible?
IPUMS does not have access to restricted use CPS data. We provide the public use data released by the Census Bureau. You may be able to access restricted use versions of the CPS data in a Research Data Center. You can read more about Federal Statistical Research Data Centers on the Census Bureau’s website. This requires an involved application process, so if you choose to pursue data access via this route, you should plan to not have access to the data for at least several months.
