Pull American Community Survey 5-year detailed table estimates from the Census Bureau API for a custom geography

domain: api.census.gov · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗

Steps

  1. Obtain a free Census API key at https://api.census.gov/data/key_signup.html (required for more than 500 requests/day)
  2. Identify the variable codes from the ACS 5-year detailed tables using the discovery endpoint: GET https://api.census.gov/data/{year}/acs/acs5/variables.json — search for table prefix (e.g., B19013 for median household income)
  3. Request data for census tracts within a county: GET https://api.census.gov/data/2023/acs/acs5?get=B19013_001E,B19013_001M&for=tract:*&in=state:06+county:037&key={key} — returns estimate (_E) and margin of error (_M) columns
  4. For block group level data, replace tract:* with block+group:* and add the tract FIPS to the in= clause
  5. Handle suppressed values: the API returns null for statistically unreliable estimates; treat nulls as missing rather than zero in aggregations
  6. Join returned FIPS codes (state+county+tract) to Census TIGER/Line shapefiles for spatial visualization by using the concatenated 11-digit GEOID

Known gotchas

Related routes

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