ACS Uniform Data Extracts
Background
CEPR creates Uniform Extracts of the U.S. Census American Community Survey (ACS). Download the data, or underlying programs and documentation used to create the extracts. If you don't want to download the data files (which are quite large), you can order CDs of the final data.
About the ACS
The ACS is an ongoing statistical survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1995, the Census began changing the means of obtaining the demographic, housing, social, and economic information previously only contained in the long form decennial census to the ACS. The ACS sends surveys to approximately 3 million housing units and group quarters in the U.S. annually. Data are primarily collected by mail, with Census telephone and personal visit follow-up. The survey generates data to help determine state and federal fund distribution by collecting information on: age, sex, race, relationships, health insurance, disabilities, education, etc.
Getting Started
To use CEPR's ACS Uniform Extracts, you should first do a few of things. Take a look at the documentation to get a sense of what variables we include and how the ACS compares to other data sources. Then, take a look at the programs to learn how we construct our ACS Uniform Extracts and how to most efficiently make use of them. Finally, take a look at our page of publications to see what is possible with the ACS and what others have done. Please feel free to contact us at ceprdata [at] cepr [dot] net if you have questions or comments.
More details about common ACS issues can be found on our ACS Documentation page. If you know something about ACS that you'd like to share with ACS users, please send us your paper or comments and we will add them to our resources as well. We can be reached at ceprdata [at] cepr [dot] net.