CensusACS.jl

A Julia package for retrieving data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) API. This is based on the R tidycensus package by Kyle Walker (https://github.com/walkerke/tidycensus/tree/master)

Features

• Fetch data from 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year ACS estimates
• Support for various geographic levels (state, county, tract, block group)
• Automatic handling of state FIPS codes
• Robust error handling and retries
• Returns data in DataFrame format
• Separate functions for estimates and margin of error values
• Fetch the list of available variables
• Download 2023 state and county 500k shapefiles

Installation

using Pkg
Pkg.add("CensusACS")

Or for development version:

using Pkg
Pkg.add(url="https://github.com/technocrat/CensusACS.jl")

Usage

using CensusACS

# Get total population estimates for all states (5-year ACS)
df = get_acs(
    variables = ["B01003_001E"],
    geography = "state"
)

# Get margin of error for total population (5-year ACS)
df_moe = get_acs_moe(
    variables = ["B01003_001M"],
    geography = "state"
)

# Get 1-year estimates for counties in California
df = get_acs(
    variables = ["B01003_001E"],
    geography = "county",
    state = "CA",
    survey = "acs1"
)

API Functions

Estimates

• get_acs5: Get 5-year ACS estimates (2009-present)
• get_acs3: Get 3-year ACS estimates (2007-2013)
• get_acs1: Get 1-year ACS estimates (2005-present, except 2020)
• get_acs: Wrapper function to access any ACS survey type

Margin of Error

• get_acs_moe5: Get 5-year ACS margin of error values
• get_acs_moe3: Get 3-year ACS margin of error values
• get_acs_moe1: Get 1-year ACS margin of error values
• get_acs_moe: Wrapper function to access any ACS MOE values

Geographic Levels

• state: State-level data
• county: County-level data
• tract: Census tract-level data
• block group: Block group-level data

Variable Codes

• Estimate variables must end with 'E' (e.g., "B01003_001E")
• MOE variables must end with 'M' (e.g., "B01003_001M")

Census API Key

To use this package, you should have a Census API key. You can get one at: https://api.census.gov/data/key_signup.html

Set your API key as an environment variable:

ENV["CENSUS_API_KEY"] = "your-api-key-here"

Notes

• 1-year ACS data is only available for geographies with populations of 65,000 or greater
• 3-year ACS data was only produced from 2007-2013 and is available for geographies with populations of 20,000 or greater
• The regular 1-year ACS for 2020 was not released due to COVID-19 impacts on data collection

Documentation

Complete documentation is available and can be built locally:

# Build documentation
cd docs
./build_docs.sh

Or manually:

cd docs
julia --project=. make.jl

The generated documentation will be in docs/build/index.html.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

MIT License