Census Data: American Community Survey (ACS)

About the ACS

The American Community Survey (ACS) is an annual survey conducted by the Census Bureau since 2005.  The ACS asks questions on a wide array of social, economic, housing, and demographic characteristics and was designed to replace the Decennial Census “long form.”

Releases

The ACS has annual estimates for areas with populations of 65,000+, 3-year estimates for areas with populations of 20,000+, and 5 year estimates for all census geographies at the block group level and larger.  More information here.

Resources for ACS estimates

I am in a hurry: Social Explorer

• What can you get - Social Explorer contains 1,3, and 5 year variable summaries from the ACS (there are other data resources available as well)
• What works well - Social Explorer has a relatively easy interface and table builder for creating data extracts.  There is also a map based data browse interface for data exploration and simple map making. 
• What does not work well - Not all variables and crosstabs are avaiabe from the category browser. 

Advanced search from data.census.gov

• What can you get - Variable summaries and crosstabs for a wide array of ACS geogroahies 
• What works well - Contains cross tabs and pre-made tables of popular variables.  Free for all to use. 
• What does not work well - Interface can be difficult to use.

NHGIS

• What can you get - Variable summaries from every census from 1790 at a wide variety of geographies.
• What works well - Relatively easy to use table table builder. Can build tables for a variety of years at once.  Free for all to use. 
• What does not work well - Not all variables and crosstabs are availabe from the category browser. 

Resources for ACS microdata

IPUMS USA

• What can you get - samples from every ACS
• What works well   - the most comprehensive resource for creating microdata samples, free and relativley easy to use
• What does not work well - this is a strongly reccommended resource, however this process is inherently complex.  Note that there are tutorials available on Youtube

Data.census.gov also has a microdata portal in beta version

• What can you get - microdata samples from every ACS
• What works well - quick and relatively easy queries
• What does not work well - you need to know exactly what you want (limited documentation on the site).