Migration of Nebraska Working Age Population via 2011-07 ACS PUMS

20180504 Update: This is a data set that is prepared explicitly for Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education (Nebraska CCPE) so that they can proceed with their 2018 Progress Report. The reason for this note is  to increase the chance so people can find the data because CCPE refused to cite this web article as the source of the data

This is simply a release of migration data for Nebraska working age population based on the ACS (American Community Survey) 2011-2007 5-year PUMS (Public Use Microdata Sample) data released by US Census Bureau.

Last year, after publishing the serials of articles about the population migration in the US, I re-examined what I did and spent times in revise the approach using more R codes than manually preparing and running SQL queries. This year, after comparing my R process for 2015-2011 and 2010-2006, I decide to restructure the R codes in an attempt to extract most of the common code to be shared and, hopefully, it will reduce the time spend in maintaining the code in the future. I intended to create R code to replace last year's process for education attainment too.

For this data release, the working age is defined as 22 to 64, inclusive.

Education Degree	Net (In) Migration	90% MOE	Possible Range
1. No High School Diploma	2,130	1,037.3	1092 to 3167
2. Has High School Diploma	35	1,247.1	-1213 to 1282
3. Some College Exp. - No Degree	1,501	1,493.2	7 to 2994
4. Associate's Degree	153	824.8	-672 to 977
5. Bachelor's Degree	89	1,260.9	-1172 to 1349
6. Graduate Degree	-1,733	935.0	-2669 to -798

As can be seen from the above table, for every year during that five-years period, there are, in net, estimated 1,733 people with graduate degree moved out of Nebraska. Since the number is derived from sampling, with 90% of certainty, the true number can lie between 2,669 and 798. So it is very likely (90% certainty) that Nebraska loses about 2,669 to 798 people with graduate degree every year during the five year period.

For population with bachelor degree, the net migration pattern isn't as clear cut as those with graduate degree since, with 90% certainty, the net can vary from 1,172 moving out to 1,349 moving in.


The released data file can be accessed here through Google Drive. The released data includes all weights that is needed to combine education categories if so desired. For data concerning other states, please follow this link.


Related articles: 
Nebraska Brain Drain Migration and Ed. Attainment, 2015 United States ACS