Small Area Estimates from the American Community Survey Using a Housing Unit Model

The American Community Survey (ACS) is designed to, ultimately, provide census long-form information on a continuous basis. Although the aim of providing current socio-economic data on the population can be realized, a yearly sample size equal to the traditional census long-form sample size would be prohibitively expensive. The aim of this work is to produce a small area estimation method that accounts for the sample design and does not assume that the within tract variance is estimated without error. In future work, this model can be easily extended to incorporate more covariates, at any of the levels, or to include data collected at previous times.