Disability Planning Data

There were a number of challenges to solve on this project.

1) US Census American Community Survey (ACS) uses a geographic entity called a PUMA (Public Use Microdata Area). That is great for the census bureau, but as far as local information, a PUMA is useless for local planners. To make the information useful, I translated it to a more reasonable geography. I developed a way to map PUMAs to US counties to solve this.

2) Sample size. I pooled 3 years of ACS data to get a large enough sample size to make the population estimates.

Comments from users:

"Finding information on individuals with disabilities is very difficult. It makes it very difficult to create programs to help when congruent data is not availble. This is the best data I've found to date!" - Researcher, Local grant office

"Your data helps me tremendously. It is very specific. I am creating a business plan for the Travis County disabled population in need of a fitness center after their insurance or disability rehabilitation benefits have been exhausted." - Researcher

"Your directions about how to use and access data are better than the US Census web sites." - Reasearcher, Native American Tribe

"Your information is very helpful. It is very difficult to easily find data in the American FactFinder tables. Census data is outdated and not available for disabilities." - Planner, Florida

"The information was helpful. I need to know the percentage of adults with disabilities in order to describe the level of need for education for people with disabilities. I plan to use the information as statistics for a United Way application." - Educator, Wisconsin

Link: http://disabilityplanningdata.com