Are you buying Facebook ads to promote counting young children in the census? Particularly with everyone spending more time at home because of the coronavirus issue, this may be a good strategy. Evidence also indicates that a large share of parents with young children use Facebook often.
To make your outreach efforts more targeted and cost-effective, we commissioned the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) to aggregate their counts of young children (ages 0-4) living in census tracts with a high-risk and very-high-risk of undercount to the ZIP Code level (because census tracts are too small a geographic area for a Facebook ad). In addition to the number of young children in high-risk and very-high-risk tracts, this new ZIP Code database includes columns showing state names, abbreviations, and FIPS codes. Some ZIP Codes have “NA” values for the count of young children for either the “High-Risk” or “Very-High-Risk” variables because those ZIP Codes did not include any census tracts that were classified as having a “High-Risk” or a “Very-High-Risk” of undercounting young children. Again, ZIP Codes are the smallest geographic areas that you can use for placing ads on Facebook. Users can take this database and determine which ZIP Codes in their state have the most young children living in tracts with a high or very high risk of being undercounted in the 2020 Census. It is worth noting that unlike the census tract database, the ZIP Code database does not include estimates of the racial/ethnic composition of young children.
You can find the ZIP Code database here.
PRB previously provided a database identifying census tracts with the highest risk of undercounting young children, which is now incorporated into the Hard to Count Map. They also produced U.S., California, and New Jersey profiles featuring eight factors associated with risk of undercount for 29 different racial and ethnic subgroups. The U.S. and California profiles are available on the Count All Kids website.
We hope these resources will be helpful in your outreach efforts to target ZIP Codes and subgroups at higher risk of undercounting young children and babies.
