Scope of migration data

USA
1

I’m trying to pull the number of people who have moved from NY to TX and TX to NY according to the 2020 1-year ACS. Here is my query:
Variables included:

  • STATEFIP
  • COUNTYFIP
  • MIGPLAC1

Cases selected:

  • STATEFIP (TX and NY)
  • MIGPLAC1 (TX and NY)

When I groupby STATEFIP and MIGPLAC1 while summing PERWT I get the following results:

  • TX > TX = 6,840,031
  • TX > NY = 40,231
  • NY > NY = 3,071,512
  • NY > TX = 22,846

Because the totals for each origin state do not add up to the total population for that state, I wanted to be sure I’m reading these results correctly.

  • TX > TX = 6,840,031 = 6.8 million Texas residents moved to a different part of Texas in the last year
  • TX > NY = 40,231 = 40k Texas residents moved to NY in the last year
  • NY > NY = 3,071,512 = 3.1 million New York residents moved to a different part of New York in the last year
  • NY > TX = 22,846 = 23k NY residents moved to Texas in the last year

I also wanted to clarify that the reason so many Texas and NY residents are missing from these data is that most residents didn’t move between counties or states last year?

Thank you!

2

Your interpretations are correct. To answer your question, anyone who is “not in universe” for the MIGPLAC1 variable will not be included in your totals. You can see the universe for any variable on its Universe Page. For MIGPLAC1 the universe is “Persons age 1+ who lived in different house 1 year ago.” So MIGPLAC1 will have a value for anyone who moved at all (even if they stayed within the same county). Of course the totals of individuals in the TX>NY and TX>TX groups (for example) also don’t include those who moved from Texas to a different state other than NY.