Why is data missing for some indicators or metro areas?
There are many reasons why data might be missing. The reasons differ depending on the source of the data. In some cases, we established minimum population thresholds and did not report metro areas with racial/ethnic populations below those thresholds, to avoid data being skewed by small sample sizes. For example, with natality/birth data, we only report information for groups that had over 100 births over the specified time period. For many neighborhood characteristics, we only report data for metro areas that have at least 5,000 members of the specified racial/ethnic group. Data is missing from some Economic Census data (on business ownership) if there were zero businesses owned by a particular racial/ethnic group. Home loan (HMDA) data could be missing if there were zero loans made for the racial/ethnic group in that metro area, or if there were too few home loans in a subgroup to calculate a stable proportion or rate. In some cases, the original source of the data may have calculate
