Tribal Youth Population

Calculating the pass-through amounts requires determining the number of juveniles under 18 being served by tribal law enforcement agencies. BIA's American Indian Population and Labor Force Report provides a count of juveniles under the age of 16 for each tribe. The report is based on a survey of federally recognized tribes and includes data on tribal enrollment, service population, and labor force information. A total of 410 tribes provided information for 2005. For tribes that did not provide updated information, data from the previous surveys, conducted in 2003 and 2001, were reported by BIA.

In order to calculate the allocation formula, two adjustments must be made to the reported tribal youth populations. The first adjustment required for the allocation calculation involves age; specifically, the Title II program includes youth ages 0-17, while data from the Labor Force Report include counts for youth ages 0-15. To make this adjustment, we used Census data to calculate the proportion of each state's Native American youth population (0-17 years of age) that consisted of 16 and 17 year-olds. The resulting percentage was then added to the BIA reported tribal youth population for 0- to 15-year-olds to estimate the tribal youth population ages 0-17.

The second adjustment requires that estimates for 2009 be derived from the 2005 BIA data in order to match the most recent Census Bureau data available for the statewide youth populations. Again, Census data were used to calculate the change in each state's Native American youth population from 2005 to 2009. The resulting change factor was then applied to the 2005 BIA figures reported by the tribes in that state.

View how this calculation was carried out for the state of Oklahoma on our Sample Calculation page.