Uninsured Population Census Data 5-year estimates for release years 2017-Current County Human Services and Insurance

Some ACS products provide an MOE instead of confidence intervals. An MOE is the difference between an estimate and its upper or lower confidence bounds. Confidence bounds can be created by adding the margin of error to the estimate (for the upper bound) and subtracting the margin of error from the estimate (for the lower bound).

All published ACS margins of error are based on a 90-percent confidence level. While an ACS 1-year estimate includes information collected over a 12-month period, an ACS 5-year estimate includes data collected over a 60-month period. In the case of ACS 1-year estimates, the period is the calendar year (e.g., the 2015 ACS covers the period from January 2015 through December 2015).

In the case of ACS multiyear estimates, the period is 5 calendar years (e.g., the 2011–2015 ACS estimates cover the period from January 2011 through December 2015). Therefore, ACS estimates based on data collected from 2011–2015 should not be labeled “2013,” even though that is the midpoint of the 5-year period. Multiyear estimates should be labeled to indicate clearly the full period of time (e.g., “The child poverty rate in 2011–2015 was X percent.”).

They do not describe any specific day, month, or year within that time period.