Source data for approximating median household income
ghing opened this issue · comments
Just to make sure I understand this correctly, to calculate median household income for an aggregate geography using the ACS, as shown in this example, would I use data from a table like ACS table B19001 to get the n (household counts), and min/max incomes for the ranges?
It looks like the wording of the top range of that table is "$200,000 or more". Should I just set an artificial upper bound for that? It looks like in the example and the linked PDF, they use $250,001.
Off the top of my head, this seems like it would be correct for many (most?) cases, but incorrect for very high income areas?
Yes, you really have no choice. Something has to be used. We recommend experimenting with different lower and upper bounds to assess its effect on the result.