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Family Income Increases 1999-2005 According to ACS The US government is mandated by the Constitution to take a census of the country’s population once every ten years, however, in our fast paced era ten years is a long time! For this reason, the Census Bureau has begun to implement the annual American Community Survey (ACS) and data for the first year (2005) has just been released for Providence.
Our chart of the month features Median Family Income figures from the ACS and the previous two censuses and indicates that since Census 2000, incomes in Providence have increased at twice the rate of Rhode Island in general. This is encouraging news, but it is important to keep in mind that the ACS, like all surveys, has a margin of error. In this case, the Census Bureau claims a rather high 17.4% margin of error (i.e. they are 90% certain that the real Median Family Income is no more than 17.4% higher or lower than the number they have published). For the state as a whole, the Survey questions a far higher number of people and the margin of error thus drops to only 2.4%.
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