The American Community Survey (ACS) makes use of the Population Estimates Program’s (PEP) official population estimates as survey controls in order to improve the ACS estimates for those characteristics which overlap with the PEP. This results in ACS estimates being equal or similar to the PEP estimates for total population as well as having similar age, sex, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic by race distributions. In addition, the ACS estimates for the total group quarters population are equal to the PEP estimates at the state and national level.

The 2023 ACS data products will use the Vintage 2023 “Blended Base” population estimates that incorporate the 2020 Census, Vintage 2020 population estimates, and 2020 Demographic Analysis (DA) estimates. In general, these estimates can be described as follows: resident, household, and group quarters (GQ) population totals are derived from the 2020 Census; national age and sex detail is drawn from the 2020 DA; race detail comes from the Vintage 2020 population estimates; and Hispanic origin detail generally comes from the 2020 Census.