# MetArea, County, and Place codes

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/metarea-county-and-place-codes/4084>\
**Category:** USA\
**Created:** [April 12, 2021, 3:45pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/metarea-county-and-place-codes/4084 "2021-04-12T15:45:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Greg\_Kirwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Greg\_Kirwin](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Greg_Kirwin)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 3:45pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/metarea-county-and-place-codes/4084/1 "2021-04-12T15:45:31Z")

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I’m looking to combine some HUD data, which appears to be identifiable at the county level, with ACS data for 2000-2011. I’m currently having some issues where there appear to be a number of counties without any representation in the ACS data; for example, Miami-Dade county has no observations for county FIPS at all. I think that this is because people living in Miami and other cities would normally be identified by a place code instead, but this isn’t available from IPUMS. The data I’m trying to merge with also has some MSAs, but I realize these can be unreliable when there are large numbers of observations outside the MSA, and the ACS has MetArea instead of MSA.

From what I have been able to find online, my options appear to be:

- Try combining MSA with MetArea codes (not sure if I can do this)
- Attempt to aggregate to PUMA level from county (not sure if this would be successful)
- Try assigning people a county based on their MetArea (probably unreliable)

Am I likely to be more successful in trying to aggregate to Met2013 for the MSA codes, or would something like PUMA make more sense?

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**Author:** ![Grace\_Cooper](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/grace_cooper/32/376_2.png) [@Grace\_Cooper](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Grace_Cooper)\
**Post date:** [April 21, 2021, 4:47pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/metarea-county-and-place-codes/4084/2 "2021-04-21T16:47:39Z")

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Due to confidentiality reasons, not all counties are identifiable in post-1950 samples in the individual-level microdata from IPUMS USA, so you are correct that there are a sizeable number of counties without representation in the ACS data (you can read more about it and find a spreadsheet outlining which counties are available in this [blogpost](http://blog.popdata.org/ipums-faqs-missing-u-s-counties/)). The sub-state geography variables in IPUMS USA, including [METAREA](https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/METAREA#description_section), [MET2013](https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/MET2013#description_section), and [COUNTYFIP](https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/COUNTYFIP#description_section), are derived from [PUMA](https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/PUMA#description_section)s, which can be related to MSAs (read more about that on the [description tab for MET2013](https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variables/MET2013#description_section)). [IPUMS NHGIS](http://nhgis.ipums.org/) offers aggregate/summary statistics for smaller areas using ACS Summary File data; these data may be preferable depending on your research needs.

If you can tell me a bit more about your HUD data and the information you would like from the ACS, I can suggest resources and/or share considerations for each of the options you presented. For instance, are the HUD data you are working with individual-level or aggregated at the MSA- or county-level? Are you interested in summary statistics for these geographies or do you require individual-level ACS data? If you provide more information about the research application of joining this data, I can provide more targeted information.