Projects

The primary focus of the Lumina Stronger Nation project is to track trends and associated equity gaps in the educational attainment of the working-age population 25-64 and 25-34 for the nation, states, counties, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and MSAs. Lumina publishes these data on an interactive website and uses them to make the case for educational reforms that will lift the nation’s educational attainment rate overall and for specific populations.

Data collection for the Stronger Nation project has typically been routine, but there have been a few issues to address along the way.

• Data Lag: New data from the American Community Survey is typically released by the Census Bureau about a year out from final collection so trend and point analyses will always be at least a year dated. Data for 2023 were available in fall-winter of 2024 and those data will be posted to the Stronger Nation website in early 2025.
• COVID-19 Pandemic: Data from the 2020 American Community Survey are not used in the Stronger Nation report due to issues surrounding collection and response to the survey. Much of the data is not available and for estimates that are, reliability is not at levels consistent with years prior and subsequent. This is particularly problematic when comparing attainment rates over time.
• Small Sample Sizes: For lesser populated geographies and some race/ethnicity groups, sample sizes from the American Community Survey can be small. As such, some estimates are associated with large errors and comparisons across time can be difficult. To help increase the reliability of estimates, particularly for estimates by race/ethnicity, county, or Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), multiple years of data are combined to increase sample sizes. Estimates by race/ethnicity are aggregated from three years of microdata while estimates for counties and MSAs are extracted from published five-year tables.
• Geographic Boundaries: Although state and county boundaries tend to be consistent over time (a few county exceptions), boundary definitions and names for some MSAs are periodically revised by the federal Office of Management and Budget making trend analysis more difficult.

The American Community Survey is the most robust source for educational attainment statistics. Total population statistics for ages 25-64 and 25-34 were extracted from published tables while more detailed statistics by race/ethnicity and age were aggregated from the available Public Use Microdata Samples.

The Stronger Nation report primarily highlights the progress of the nation and states in achieving the 60% degree attainment goal of the population aged 25-64 by 2025 (the current goal also includes completion of workforce-relevant postsecondary certificates and industry-recognized certifications, estimates aggregated by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The goal of the report is to highlight the need for better postsecondary completion. Given the tight connection between educational attainment and positive economic outcomes for individuals and communities on one hand, and social well-being on the other, this effort aims to support the creation of a stronger, more competitive workforce and a healthy civic society.

Publications, data, methods, and sources can be found on the Lumina Stronger Nation website.