Is Census data for Puerto Rico (PRCS) available at the census tract level, block group level, block level, or more specific through IPUMS USA? We are trying to obtain geographic variables that capture narrower regions than municipality (PRCOUNTY). Is there a variable [or variables] we could use for this when downloading PRCS data from IPUMS USA? We were not able to identify any through the SELECT DATA tab. We truly appreciate any assistance with this.
The answer here is going to be an overwhelming “no” on getting tract or block level data from IPUMS, which does not identify areas with under 100,000 population.
As mentioned in that sample info. page from the 2021 ACS 5-year sample: “The smallest identifiable geographic unit is the PUMA, containing at least 100,000 persons.”
If you want data for small geographies, your best bet in my opinion will be the Census summary tables. You can also access these through the Census API, and if you are programming using R there are amazing packages that can make using the API simple.
Hope that helps!
@Chris_B is partially correct. IPUMS USA provides microdata from the PRCS, and the Census Bureau identifies no areas with fewer than 100,000 residents in the public-use microdata, so IPUMS USA also doesn’t identify any areas smaller than that.
But IPUMS NHGIS provides summary tables from the ACS and PRCS, which go down to the level of block groups. Unlike the separate ACS & PRCS microdata samples, the Census Bureau publishes all ACS & PRCS summary data within a single series of “ACS Summary Files,” so to get PRCS data in NHGIS, you can just select tables from any of the NHGIS ACS datasets.
Note that most NHGIS data files include the entire U.S. and Puerto Rico. We support state-specific requests only for block and block-group data, so you could request to get only Puerto Rico block groups (it’s an option after you’ve selected your tables and just before you submit your request), but for tract or higher-level data, you’d get a file containing all areas, from which you could select just the Puerto Rico records.
IPUMS also provides an API and an R package for accessing either IPUMS USA or NHGIS data. We’ll also soon be releasing a major update to the R package that will add a lot of useful features for NHGIS especially.
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