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For each geographic district or county, we use data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) to create estimates of the average socioeconomic status (SES) of families. Every year, the ACS surveys families in each community in the U.S. We use six community characteristics reported in 5-year rolling surveys from 2005-2009 through 2015-2019 to construct a composite measure of SES in each community:
- Median income
- Percentage of adults age 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher
- Poverty rate among households with children age 5–17
- Percentage of households receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
- Percentage of households headed by single mothers
- Employment rate for adults age 25–64
The composite SES measure is standardized so that a value of 0 represents the SES of the average school district in the U.S. Approximately two-thirds of districts have SES values between -1 and +1, and approximately 95% have SES values between -2 and +2 (so values larger than 2 or smaller than -2 represent communities with very high or very low average socioeconomic status, respectively). In some places we cannot calculate a reliable measure of socioeconomic status, because the ACS samples are too small; in these cases, no value for SES is reported. For more detailed information, please see the technical documentation.