# 2012 ACS 5-YR File: Sex and Race variables

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/2012-acs-5-yr-file-sex-and-race-variables/3252>\
**Category:** USA\
**Created:** [November 17, 2019, 8:13pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/2012-acs-5-yr-file-sex-and-race-variables/3252 "2019-11-17T20:13:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Brittany\_Rico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f08c70/32.png) [@Brittany\_Rico](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Brittany_Rico)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2019, 8:13pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/2012-acs-5-yr-file-sex-and-race-variables/3252/1 "2019-11-17T20:13:24Z")

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When I do a simple tabulation of SEX, RACE, or RACED using the 2012 ACS 5-YR file I see a category/label for 0. Why am I seeing a 0 category for these variables? For example SEX has the categories “0, Male, Female.”

![SEX_RACED_2012ACS_5-YR](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/ipums/original/1X/848756d67cc9549f8cb5c8cbcf7455a23352ec9e.png)

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**Author:** ![JeffBloem](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/jeffbloem/32/40_2.png) [@JeffBloem](https://forum.ipums.org/u/JeffBloem)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2019, 4:07pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/2012-acs-5-yr-file-sex-and-race-variables/3252/2 "2019-11-19T16:07:26Z")

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I just checked the 2012 5-year ACS file myself and was not able to replicate this observation. Additionally, other numbers in the tabulation seem to be off (e.g., there should be 15,318,124 total person records in the file but only 6,983,677 are reported above). It looks like the data may not have been decompressed (e.g., unzipped) properly. If you are using a Windows machine, we tend to recommend [7zip](https://www.7-zip.org/) as a decompression software. Finally, [here is a tutorial video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orif_kvhkMY&feature=youtu.be) about how to download IPUMS data and load it into Stata.

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**Author:** ![Brittany\_Rico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f08c70/32.png) [@Brittany\_Rico](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Brittany_Rico)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2019, 12:25am UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/2012-acs-5-yr-file-sex-and-race-variables/3252/3 "2019-12-01T00:25:02Z")

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Thanks for letting me know, something likely went amiss when extracting the data. I re-extracted using WinRAR and I am now getting the correct sample size and no longer seeing 0’s as categories for SEX and RACED. I also thought the number of person records was really strange as it was vastly different to another ACS 5-YR file I was looking at. Thanks for your help.