Demographic Analysis (DA) is an important tool for measuring coverage of the population in the decennial census. For DA to provide an accurate measure of coverage, reliable estimates of births, deaths, immigration, and emigration are essential. An evaluation of the initial DA 2000 estimates by component suggested a possible underestimation of net international migration (NIM) (Robinson, Adlakha, and West, 2002). Detailed analyses were conducted to evaluate assumptions in the initial DA estimates and alternative assumptions were used to produce a new set of estimates, which included higher levels of immigration. The analyses completed for DA 2000 demonstrated the difficulties in measuring net international migration as well as the importance of reliable immigration estimates. This paper outlines the methods that will be used for DA 2010 to develop the NIM component of the national DA estimate.

Over the past decade, the Census Bureau has undertaken a major initiative to improve its ability to measure net international migration. The implementation of the American Community (ACS) provides us with critical demographic information between decennial censuses that was not available in previous decades. In addition to this new data source, the Census Bureau has dedicated significant resources to researching methods for measuring immigration. We have developed new methods of estimating components of migration through this research, which are currently used in the Census Bureau’s annual population estimates. This methodology, referred to as the Residence One Year Ago (ROYA) method, is considered an improvement over previously used measures of immigration (Kennedy-Puthoff, Bhaskar, and Rastogi, 2008) and will be the basis of our DA 2010 estimates for the 2000 to 2010 time period.

For DA 2010, we will produce different components of international migration than those produced for DA 2000. The selection of the components included for DA 2010 is driven by available data.