Query 2015 ACS 5-year estimates for all block groups within a state

Tom over 7 years ago

This is a cross-post: https://acsdatacommunity.prb.org/acs-data-issues/acs-basics/f/10/t/285.

Hi Group,

We're trying to figure out if we can query (API or FTP) 2015 ACS 5-year estimates for all block groups within a state for certain IDs/variables. An example screenshot of the query in American Fact Finder (AFF) is attached. Right now it looks like 2015 ACS 5-year estimates are only available through the API (and not FTP), and we're not sure if it is possible to request all block groups for an entire state at once as we are getting an error. Does anyone know if this request is even possible through the Census API for ACS?

Thanks,

Tom

shintze over 7 years ago

I don't believe it is possible via the Census API directly, as you cannot use a wild card for the county or request more than one county at a time for a state with block group level requests. However, I was able to pull all block groups for the state of Wyoming by using an array of county values for the geography. I'm not sure this would work for all states, as the number of counties may exceed some predefined limit. This is what that looks like in R: wy.geo=geo.make(state=56, county=c(1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25,27,29,31,33,35,37,39,41,43,45), tract="*", block.group="*") .
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Tom over 7 years ago in reply to shintze

Thanks Shintze, that answers our question, unless someone from the Census tells us otherwise. We'll just go ahead and do it in Python/SQL/R.
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