Harmonized Historical ACS Measures provides 30 measures of neighborhood population, socioeconomic conditions, and housing for census tracts in the 50 states and DC, 2010–2024. Use these five-year American Community Survey (ACS) estimates to link neighborhood characteristics to research data and examine patterns over time.
Download the .parquet file from
GitHub Releases.
Each file contains the complete supported history and can be read by R, Python,
and database tools with Parquet support.
Keep the matching .measures.yml catalog as your data dictionary: it documents
measure definitions, units, source variables, available years, and release
coverage. The accompanying .CPI.csv records the inflation-adjustment inputs;
adjusted values are already included in the data.
The release description includes formatted measure tables and expandable source and calculation details, generated from that release’s catalog.
The dataset is one wide table with one row per census tract and ACS ending year, and 62 columns: two identifiers, 30 estimates, and 30 margins of error.
| Column | Type | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
census_tract_id |
String | 11-character tract identifier; preserve leading zeros |
year |
Integer | Ending year of the five-year estimate; 2024 covers 2020–2024 |
<measure> |
Numeric | Estimate, such as n_pop, fraction_poverty, or median_income |
<measure>_moe |
Numeric | Margin of error at the 90% confidence level, in the estimate’s units |
Use both census_tract_id and year as the key when joining or importing
records. Fractions use proportions (0.15 means 15%); fields ending in
_2010adj express dollars in 2010 purchasing power. Unavailable or suppressed
values are missing, and the set of tracts can differ by year.
Measure definitions account for year-specific ACS variables. Tract boundaries follow each ACS release and are not harmonized across years, so match geographic assignments to the selected ACS year.
Browse measure definitions · Development guide · Release changelog
# install.packages(c("stow", "nanoparquet"))
d <-
"https://github.com/geomarker-io/hh_acs_measures/releases/download/" |>
paste0("v3.0.0/hh_acs_measures-v3.0.0.parquet") |>
stow::stow() |>
nanoparquet::read_parquet()
Use Arrow to filter before loading rows into R. This example reads only Ohio
tracts (39 is Ohio’s state FIPS code) for 2024. The complete file is downloaded
and cached by stow, but only the matching rows are collected into memory.
# install.packages(c("stow", "arrow", "dplyr"))
d <-
"https://github.com/geomarker-io/hh_acs_measures/releases/download/" |>
paste0("v3.0.0/hh_acs_measures-v3.0.0.parquet") |>
stow::stow() |>
arrow::open_dataset() |>
dplyr::filter(year == 2024, substr(census_tract_id, 1, 2) == "39") |>
dplyr::collect()
Original project code, documentation, and any copyrightable contributions to released datasets are available under the MIT license. Retain its copyright and permission notice when redistributing that material.
The public ACS Summary File data are U.S. government works and are not subject to copyright protection in the United States. They may be used and redistributed without copyright permission; the MIT license does not impose restrictions on these public-domain source data. See 17 U.S.C. § 105 and the Census Bureau’s public-access policy. The BLS inflation inputs are also public domain under its copyright policy.
Credit the U.S. Census Bureau as the source of the original ACS data and BLS as the source of the inflation inputs. Identify this project as the source of the derived measures and calculations. These derived measures are produced by the project contributors; they are not official Census Bureau estimates. Census’s citation guidance explains how to acknowledge original data separately from subsequent analyses.
Harmonized Historical ACS Measures contributors. Harmonized Historical ACS Measures (version VERSION) [Data set]. geomarker.io. https://github.com/geomarker-io/hh_acs_measures/releases/tag/TAG
Replace VERSION and TAG with the version and exact release tag used in your
analysis. Use the release’s publication year when your citation style requires
one. CITATION.cff supplies citation metadata for GitHub and other
tools; the template above identifies the specific dataset snapshot.
Also acknowledge the original inputs:
Original data: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Summary Files, 2010–2024. Inflation inputs: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index retroactive series using current methods (R-CPI-U-RS).
Adjust the ACS years to those used in your analysis. The matching release catalog records the source URLs and CPI documentation.