ACS Data Users Group

Hi! I am a grad student trying to download ZCTA-level poverty data for 2012-2019 (5-year estimates) using table S1701. I have only used census data a couple of times, so I am new at this, but it appears that this data is not available (or at least it will not load) for any year prior to 2019. Does anyone have experience with this or insight as to why I might be having this issue? Thank you - I appreciate the help!

Hi. Is it possible that when choosing a different year, you're clicking on the 1-year estimate instead of the 5-year estimate?

The 1-year estimates don't have ZCTA-level data.

If this isn't the issue, could you describe in more detail what steps you've taken to lead to not seeing the data? Are you getting an error or a blank page, or not seeing the ZCTA geography available?

Hi-

Thanks for replying. I am choosing the 5-year estimates. Here is what it looks like prior to choosing ZCTA as the geography.

Issue is as soon as I choose ZCTA as the level of geography, all years disappear except 2019. The data is too large to display as well in the photo below, but that's not the issue I'm concerned about. Here's another screenshot:

I see now, the same thing is happening for me. It's happening for both Subject Tables and Detailed Tables. It seems the issue has something to do with selecting "All ZCTAs in United States" or for a given state; if you select a specific ZCTA, then other years are visible. Maybe someone here from Census can look into it.

In the meantime, I can suggest a few other options:
1. Download the full summary files for each year (you probably don't want to do this; it would be a big project).
2. Use a third party tool, a variety of which plenty of people here will be excited to recommend. (I'm a PolicyMap partisan, but you'll need access through your university, and it doesn't have overlapping years of 5-year estimates; eg. only 2015-2019, 2010-2014, and 2005-2009... but that's because you shouldn't compare overlapping 5-year estimates, like 2012-2016 and 2015-2019. Census Reporter might also be a good option.)