Dear all,
I have a question regarding the Census 2000 and 2010. I was looking at the samples:
|[2000 1%]|1.0%||
|[2010 ACS 5yr]|5.0%||
|[2010 10%]|10.0%|
And specifically, I´m looking at the metro area “san diego-carlsbad, ca”. Which is identified in the variable met2013 for the 2010 year. But is missing for the 2000 year. I have seen the forum and some of the answers you gave to the users. But I still don´t understand if metarea==“san diego, ca” in year 2000 is the same as met2013== “san diego-carlsbad, ca” in 2010.
Many thanks in advance,
METAREA and MET2013 are not directly comparable. I will refer you to the variable description pages and the comparability page for MET2013 for more details on how these differ. METAREA is available for most samples prior to 2012, while MET2013 is available from 2005 on, plus the 5% and 1% unweighted samples for 2000 (see the availability page). You can use either of these variables for comparison of 2000 and 2010 (depending on the sample), but you shouldn’t try to use both. You can see the list of counties defining metro areas over time here. METAREA uses the 1999 scheme starting in 2000, while MET2013 uses the 2013 scheme for all available years.
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As it happens, for San Diego specifically, METAREA and MET2013 are directly comparable because the San Diego metro area (labeled as “San Diego-Carlsbad” in the 2013 definition) has always covered the same geographic extent throughout its history, and both METAREA and MET2013 are able to identify that extent exactly.
I determined this first by looking at the list of counties defining metro areas for METAREA, which Matthew shared. To determine which counties are associated with the 2013 metro areas, I found the 2013 list on this Census Bureau page. In all of these sources, the San Diego (+ Carlsbad) metro area corresponds exactly to San Diego County.
Next, I also checked this listing of incompletely identified metro areas for METAREA, and I checked the omission and commission errors for MET2013 through the links at the bottom of the MET2013 variable description. There have been no mismatch errors for this metro area for either METAREA or MET2013.
So, in this case, METAREA and MET2013 are complete and exactly comparable (as long as you take account of the different numeric code they each use to identify San Diego). For other metro areas, they often aren’t comparable, so Matthew’s general advice is true for many other use cases!
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Thank you so much Matthew!
Thank you so much Jonathan. This clarifies my question. This is really helpful!!