Sex Ratios in the 2003 through 2006 ACS Single-Year and Multiyear Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) files

UPDATE: The 2006 ACS 1-year PUMS files were re-released on December 18, 2009. See Errata Note #50 for details.

Disclosure avoidance techniques were applied to the 2003 through 2006 ACS 1-year PUMS files to protect the confidentiality of responses. One of these techniques resulted in some inconsistent ratios for the number of men to the number of women (sex ratio) for people age 65 and over. Table 1 below displays 2006 ACS data from Detailed Table B01001 (Sex by Age) for ages 60 and over for the nation and the corresponding data from the 2006 PUMS file. An example of the inconsistency is shown in the 65-66 age group, where the sex ratio estimate is 88, but the ACS PUMS data indicate a sex ratio estimate of 98. The disclosure avoidance technique has been modified to avoid this distortion of age data in future releases of the ACS PUMS files.

Table 1. 2006 ACS — National

The sex ratio inconsistencies may continue to be seen in any multiyear PUMS files that include the 2005 or 2006 ACS 1-year PUMS, since for the time being, these files remain unmodified due to disclosure risks. This includes the 2005-2007, 2006-2008, 2005-2009, and 2006-2010 Multiyear ACS PUMS files. Table 2 below displays 2005-2007 ACS 3-year data from Detailed Table B01001 (Sex by Age) for ages 60 and over for the nation and the corresponding data from the 2005-2007 ACS 3-year PUMS file. Again, looking at the 65-66 age group, the sex ratio estimate is 88, but the ACS PUMS data indicate a sex ratio estimate of 95.

Table 2. 2005-2007 ACS — National