In the first several years of the Georgetown Metropolitan, GM closely tracked what he dubbed to be a baby boom in Georgetown. It’s been, well, a long, long time since GM looked into the numbers. So where do we stand?
Back in 2014, GM looked at the American Community Survey for 2013 for age data. Although compiled by the Census Bureau, the ACS is not the capital ‘C’ Census. Like its name suggests, it is the result of surveys. And as such, is more of an estimate. For geographic areas as small as Georgetown, the estimates are for five trailing years. So if the ACS data says as of 2013 that there are 12,000 people in Georgetown, it means that on average from 2008 to 2013 there were roughly 12,000 people in Georgetown.
That throat clearing complete, the numbers GM highlighted in 2014 said the following:
2013:
- Under the age of 5: 605
- Between the age of 5 and 9: 257
- Between 10 and 14: 183
- Between 15 and 19: 553
The youngest cohort was the most striking since just three years earlier the Census has actually counted (not estimated) that only 400 children under the age of 5 lived in Georgetown. This is what GM cited as the boom.
Well what does the ACS say now? Well the talk of a boom might have been premature:
2019:
- Under 5: 373
- 5-9: 300
- 10-14: 200
- 15-19: 444
Those numbers are far more in line with the 2010 Census. And it may turn out that the supposed baby boom was nothing but a statistical blip. Which would not be surprising since the Census Bureau makes it clear that the ACS data for areas a small as Georgetown comes with really high margins of error. For instance, for 2019 the margin of error for the under 5 category is 217. Meaning that there are likely 373 little kids in Georgetown, plus or minus 217. It’s basically a complete crapshoot. We won’t know for certain what the demographics are for Georgetown until the complete 2020 Census is released.
So stay tuned…
