# Median Family Income by PUMA

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/median-family-income-by-puma/6044>\
**Category:** USA\
**Created:** [August 9, 2024, 4:00pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/median-family-income-by-puma/6044 "2024-08-09T16:00:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Greg\_Oliven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3be4f8/32.png) [@Greg\_Oliven](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Greg_Oliven)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2024, 4:00pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/median-family-income-by-puma/6044/1 "2024-08-09T16:00:07Z")

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Hi, do you publish a list of median family income by PUMA? Or do would I have to do this myself by taking the median FTOTINC per PUMA?

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**Author:** ![Benjamin\_Albrecht](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/benjamin_albrecht/32/988_2.png) [@Benjamin\_Albrecht](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Benjamin_Albrecht)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2024, 10:51pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/median-family-income-by-puma/6044/2 "2024-08-09T22:51:07Z")

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Hey Greg!

I believe IPUMS only contains the microdata. Calculating median family income by PUMA can be done by finding the weighted median of households within PUMAs.

If you are an R user, there is an easy way to acquire this data using Kyle Walker’s tidycensus package. Here is the code to get it from the Census API:  
 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/ipums/original/1X/dd38207d37cd56a8292ea3ebbd6322da931e37d1.png)

And here is what the resulting dataframe looks like:

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/ipums/original/1X/20de9dd9213de501b895bb46884ed71899022e23.png)

Package:

> **[Load US Census Boundary and Attribute Data as tidyverse and sf-Ready Data Frames](https://walker-data.com/tidycensus/)**
>
> An integrated R interface to several United States Census Bureau APIs () and the US Census Bureau's geographic boundary files. Allows R users to return Census and ACS data as tidyverse-ready data frames, and optionally returns a list-column with...

The author also has an online textbook (free!) that teaches you how to use it:

> **[Preface | Analyzing US Census Data](https://walker-data.com/census-r/)**
>
> This book is an overview of how practitioners can acquire, wrangle, visualize, and model US Census data with the R programming language.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Isabel\_Pastoor](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/isabel_pastoor/32/788_2.png) [@Isabel\_Pastoor](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Isabel_Pastoor)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 6:12pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/median-family-income-by-puma/6044/3 "2024-08-12T18:12:25Z")

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[IPUMS NHGIS](https://www.nhgis.org/) provides summary data from the U.S. decennial census, American Community Survey (ACS), and other sources, aggregated at a variety of geographic levels, including PUMA. You can search for tables on family income by PUMA using the [NHGIS data finder](https://data2.nhgis.org/main). For example, by searching for tables on family and household income at the PUMA level for 2022, I was able to find _Table B19113 Median Family Income in the Past 12 Months (in 2022 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars)_.

 ![Screenshot 2024-08-09 at 4.10.42 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/ipums/original/1X/05bfcee44c924a6e74c38c317b821d724f50b9f5.png)

See this [brief video tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1znKKm8vX4) for helpful instructions for using the data finder.

[IPUMS USA](https://usa.ipums.org/usa/) offers microdata from the U.S. decennial census and ACS. These are person-level data, and do not come pre-aggregated at geographic levels. However, [PUMA](https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/PUMA#description_section) is an available variable in many IPUMS USA samples. If you prefer to work with microdata, you can calculate median [family income](https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/FTOTINC#description_section) at the PUMA level yourself. This [video tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZR0aDwr91s) provides an introduction to using IPUMS USA’s data extract system to create a custom data extract that can be opened and analyzed in a statistical software package such as R, Stata, SAS, or SPSS. We also have an [online data analysis tool](https://usa.ipums.org/usa/sda/) that is useful for simple tabulations like these. Keep in mind that PUMA codes are state-dependent, so you must combine PUMA with a STATEFIP or STATEICP value, or view PUMAs by state, when working with microdata.