Hi all! I’m working on a research project and trying to pull some information from the USA database, specifically to filter in Florida, to locate race, age, socioeconomic status, etc by zip code ideally, or at least by city. I’m working on a research project that will cross-reference this data with voter turnout data I have to see what correlations exist in voting behaviors, but while City shows up as a field, it’s not pulling the information - only for Jacksonville and south florida, not anywhere else, it’s all blank. Additionally, if Zip Code is possible, I’d appreciate any guidance on that.
IPUMS USA provides microdata from the U.S. decennial census and American Community Survey. Microdata are person or household level data. The smallest geographic area explicitly identified in the microdata is public use microdata area (PUMA), a geographic area defined based on population. Each PUMA includes about 100,000 residents. IPUMS geographers are sometimes able to infer other small geographic areas, such as city, metro area, and county, from PUMA, depending on how the boundaries of PUMAs and these other geographic areas correspond. As a result, some cities, metro areas, and counties are not able to be identified in the microdata.
For your purposes, I would recommend using IPUMS NHGIS data. IPUMS NHGIS data are also from the decennial census and American Community Survey. They differ from IPUMS USA data in that they are aggregated data that describe the populations of geographic areas. In IPUMS USA data, each observation is a person or household; in IPUMS NHGIS data, each observation is a particular geographic area, such as a city or a ZIP code tabulation area (ZCTA). While the summary data from IPUMS NHGIS come pre-constructed into a fixed set of tables (meaning you cannot create custom tabulations), they are available at much finer geographic areas than what is available in the microdata.
To get started with IPUMS NHGIS, I would recommend looking through the user guide and watching this brief video tutorial on the NHGIS data finder. I will also provide an example here of how to search for tables in the data finder.
In the geographic levels filter, I selected 5-DIGIT ZIP CODE TABULATION AREA (ZCTA) [2000-PRESENT]. In the years filter, I selected 2010. In the topics filter, I selected age and race. Below is a screenshot of these filter options and the first few search results. Each search result is a table available on those topics, at that geographic level, in that survey year.
