ACS Data Users Group

Hi all!

I am trying to download the S0103 file from the ACS - to study the 65+ population at the ZCTA level. Whenever I download the file, I only get ~900 variables (when I should get ~33K) regardless of whether I open with R or with Excel. I tried setting the geography to counties, to see if the number of rows was just to unwieldy, and that data download was also truncated (providing only ~1100 rows, vs. the expected ~3K).

Thanks for the help!

Hi Hannah,

This may be due to the Census Bureau's data suppression rules for Subject Tables. Here is some text from their ACS Data Suppression document (https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/data_suppression/ACSO_Data_Suppression.pdf):

"Subject tables featuring specific population groups and iterated Selected Population Profiles (SPPs) that are generated directly from microdata are filtered in a similar matter to detailed tables, except that filtering is applied to the sub-population groups as opposed to the whole tables. However, if one half or more of the lines in a SPP for a geography are filtered out, the whole table is filtered out for that geography."

If there are specific estimates that you need for the 65+ population, you may be able to access them from other tables.

-Mark

Thanks Mark - When I read this data, it says that the data suppression does not apply to the 5 year estimates. Can you clarify what might be happening here? What other tables might be useful?

This is generally true but there are "special rules for the Selected Population Profiles" and it looks like they are applying these rules to this subject table: "There must be at least 65,000 people (for 1-year) and 7,000 people (for 5-year) in the specific population subgroup." (In this case I think there needs to be at least 7,000 people ages 65+ in the ZCTA.)
I haven't done much digging into other potential tables but pulled up one Detailed Table that looked like it included the full set of ZCTAs: B09020: RELATIONSHIP BY HOUSEHOLD TYPE (INCLUDING LIVING ALONE) FOR THE POPULATION 65 YEARS AND OVER. So there may some Detailed ('B' or 'C') Tables that have the data you need.

Interesting. Ok - thank you so much for the prompt replies!