Document Type

Report

Publication Date

6-2016

Abstract

The following tables and graphs look at the number and percentage of children living in families where all parents present are in the labor force. The data are from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010-2014 American Community Survey (ACS).

The tables in this report are based on the Legislative District that were approved by the Legislature in 2011 and were based on the data from the 2010 Census. Because of changes in Legislative District boundaries, the tables in this report are not directly comparable to prior reports using the previous boundaries.

On December 3, 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau released five‐year ACS estimates for the combined years of 2010 through 2014, making available social, economic, housing and demographic statistics for every county and community in Nebraska and the nation. Also available are estimates for Nebraska’s Legislative Districts, which are used in this report. The ACS is an ongoing, nation-wide survey conducted every month. Each year approximately 1 in 40 persons are sampled. During the past 5 years in Nebraska, there has been an average of about 46,000 persons interviewed per year.

While this annual number of interviews is adequate for state-level summaries, for smaller levels of geography like legislative districts and most Nebraska counties, only 5-year data are available for analysis. The 5-year estimates are period estimates. The data are based on a rolling national sample survey mailed monthly from 2010 through 2014. By pooling several years of survey responses, the ACS can generate detailed statistical portraits of smaller geographies that represent the characteristics of the population over the specific data collection period. The Census Bureau issues new sets of these five-year estimates every year, permitting users to track trends in even the smallest of areas over time. This is the third set of five-year estimates available using the 2011 boundaries.

The new 2010‐2014 ACS estimates are not related to the 2010 Census population counts that have been released. The ACS complements the decennial count and provides estimates of population characteristics that are far more detailed than the basic demographic information that has been released from the 2010 Census.

Because it is a survey based on a sample of the population rather than the entire population, the ACS produces estimates, not actual counts. Since it is based on a sample, the ACS also is subject to sampling error. To aid data users, the Census Bureau calculates and publishes a margin of error for every ACS estimate it produces.

On the following page are definitions of some of the terms used in this report.

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