Topic

Data Sources

Arts and Culture Indicators Project (ACIP)

The Urban Institute's Arts and Culture Indicators Project has developed both a comprehensive definition of cultural vitality and tools for how to measure it. Cultural vitality indicators measure the practice of creating, disseminating, validating and supporting arts and culture as a dimension of everyday community life and conditions. The indicators include data on arts employment and the strength of the commercial and nonprofit arts sectors, drawing from Occupational Employment Statistics, Non-Employer Statistics, County Business Patterns, and the National Center for Charitable Statistics.

Commentaries:

Arts and Culture

Source:

http://metrotrends.org/natdata/acip/index.cfm
http://nccs.urban.org/

Download Data:

2006 and 2008

American Community Survey (ACS)

The American Community Survey (ACS) is an ongoing statistical survey run by the U.S. Census Bureau, replacing the long form in the decennial census. The ACS has approximately 250,000 respondents monthly, totaling 3 million per year. The dataset describes Americans' demographic makeup, income levels, housing circumstances, and more.

Commentaries:

Urban Seniors, Earnings and Housing Affordability,
New Metropolitan Diversity, Investing in Children, Income Inequality

Source:

http://www.census.gov/acs

Download Data:

2007, 2008, 2009, Income Inequality Indicators, Project-Based Housing

ACS Health Insurance Indicators

This extract of the ACS provides indicators of the type and level of health insurance held by Americans in 2008. The file for download includes the standard errors associated with the statistical estimates.

Commentaries:

Challenges for Health Reform

http://www.census.gov/acs

Download Data:

2008

Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System

The BRFSS is a cross-sectional telephone survey conducted by state health departments with technical and methodological assistance provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2009, the BRFSS collected data on 432,607 noninstitutionalized adults.

Commentaries:

Chronic Disease in US Metropolitan Areas

http://www.cdc.gov/Brfss/

Download Data:

BRFSS

Children of Immigrants IPUMS Calculations (COI)

The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS-USA) consists of more than fifty high-precision samples of the American population drawn from fifteen federal censuses and from the American Community Surveys of 2000-2009 (Ruggles et al. 2010). IPUMS is not a collection of compiled statistics; it is composed of microdata where each record is a person organized into households, making it possible to study the characteristics of people in the context of their families or other co-residents. The microdata are weighted in order to calculate aggregate statistics for diverse geographies. The Urban Institute used the 2000 U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 5 percent sample and the combined 2008 and 2009 American Community Survey datasets that together comprise a 2 percent sample of the U.S. population. The number of children with immigrant parents is estimated for the smallest level of geography available in the microdata, the Primary Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs). In order to derive metro level statistics, the Urban Institute employed the Missouri Census Data Center's MABLE/Geocorr2K online application to crosswalk the 2000 PUMAs to the U.S. Census Bureau November 2008 Core Based Statistical Area definitions.

"Children of immigrants" or "children with immigrant parents" are children who have at least one foreign-born parent living in the household. Children with native-born parents live with two parents that are both native-born or a single parent who is native-born. "Immigrant" or "foreign-born" persons are born outside the United States and its territories. Those born in Puerto Rico and other territories or born abroad to U.S. citizen parents are "native-born."

Source: Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010

Commentaries:

Children of Immigrants

Source:

http://usa.ipums.org/usa/, http://mcdc.missouri.edu/websas/geocorr2k.html

Download Data:

Children of Immigrants

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of about 50,000 households conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPS is the primary source of information on the labor force characteristics of the U.S. population. The sample is scientifically selected to represent the civilian noninstitutional population. The CPS includes indicators on employment, unemployment, earnings, hours of work, and other indicators. The MetroTrends commentary on Earnings and Housing Affordability used the CPS Food Security Supplement to analyze indicators of food insecurity, which is determined based on a series of 18 questions about experiences and behaviors that indicate food insecurity, such as being unable, at times, to afford balanced meals, cutting the size of meals because of too little money for food, or being hungry because of too little money for food.

NOTE: Because the CPS sample is not designed to be representative of each metropolitan area individually, the MetroTrends CPS file only includes two records: one for the US as a whole, and one for all metropolitan areas combined.

These data are a custom tabulation of 2005-2009 US Census Bureau ACS data, with indicators measuring the number of "disconnected" youth in the nation's 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas. Disconnected youth are those both unemployed and not enrolled in school. The data include cuts by race, education level and unemployment.

These data are a custom tabulation of 2000 US Census Bureau data, used to define and calculate relative urban and exurban populations in the top 100 metropolitan areas. Criteria used to define exurban areas include housing density (number of units per square mile), age of housing stock, and commuting ties to neighboring metropolitan centers. In general, exurban areas have low housing density, newer housing stock and at least 25% of residents who commute to an urban core.

FDIC Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked US Households

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) conducted the 2009 FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households to address a gap in reliable data on the number of unbanked and underbanked households in the United States, and as part of its efforts to comply with a statutory mandate that requires the FDIC to conduct ongoing surveys of banks on their efforts to serve the unbanked. The household survey complements the FDIC Survey on Banks' Efforts to Serve the Unbanked and Underbanked, published in February 2009, and provides significant new insights into the size of the unbanked and underbanked markets at the national, state, and large metropolitan statistical area (MSA) level. It is intended to inform policymakers and the industry about economic inclusion issues, and to promote the goal of ensuring that all Americans have access to basic, safe, and affordable bank services.

Commentaries:

Alternative Financial Services

FDIC Survey

Download Data:

2009 Survey

The HPI is a broad measure of the movement of single-family house prices.  The HPI is a weighted, repeat-sales index, meaning that it measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same properties. This information is obtained by reviewing repeat mortgage transactions on single-family properties whose mortgages have been purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac since January 1975.

NOTE: The HPI source data do not provide HPI values for metropolitan areas that contain metropolitan divisions, instead just providing the values for the divisions. MetroTrends estimates the HPI for these metros by calculating the geometric mean of the HPI across the metro divisions within each metro. To aggregate metro-level HPI values across all (or the top 100) metros, MetroTrends uses a simple arithmetic mean across the metros.

Picture of Subsidized Households describes the nearly 5 million households living in HUD-subsidized housing in the United States for the year 2008. Picture 2008 provides characteristics of assisted housing units and residents, summarized at the national, state, public housing agency (PHA), project,census tract, county, Core-Based Statistical Area and city levels.

Neighborhood Diversity

Data are from Brown University's US2010: America in the First Decade of the 20th Century, a project dedicated to changes in American society in the recent past. Estimates of racial composition today derive from the 2005-2009 tract-level American Community Survey data, which are subject to sampling error and may be imprecise in small areas.

Commentaries:

Neighborhood Diversity

Download Data:

Neighborhood Exposure, Segregation

http://www.nlihc.org/oor/
http://www.nlihc.org/oor/oor2011

The Public Libraries Survey (PLS) is a national census of public library systems. It is conducted annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau, State Library Agencies, and the Library Statistics Working Group. Its data elements cover library service measures such as circulation, library visits, the number of Internet terminals available to the general public, reference transactions, children's program attendance, and circulation of children's materials. It also includes information on collection sizes, staffing, operating revenue and expenditures. The PLS is designed as a universe survey; its survey frame consists of 9,225 public libraries in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and selected US territories. It is administered via a web-based survey tool.

The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are a set of standardized crime statistics updated monthly and summarized to the metropolitan, county and state levels. Over 17,000 local law-enforcement agencies report a standardized set of crime statistics to the FBI, which compiles them into a nationally accessible database.  Local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, as well as criminologists, sociologists, legislators, the media and the general public access and analyze these data.

Data for this analysis were compiled by the National Archive for Criminal Justice Data (AC) from UCR data, and are adjusted to account for missing observations. Additionally, these data avoid the biases involved with ranking disparate metropolitan areas, since the analysis measures changes in rates, rather than levels.

The Zillow Home Value Index represents the median price of a home in a given geographical area. Zillow estimates the value of tens of millions of individual homes using a proprietary formula. The data come from most county and municipal governments and are updated regularly.