Guides: Census Information: Datasets

A Note on Microdata

Public Use Microdata Sample files show the full range of population and housing unit responses collected. For example, they show how respondents answered questions on occupation, place of work, and so forth. The PUMS files contain records for a subsample of housing units and group quarters persons, with information on the characteristics of these housing units and group quarters persons plus the people in the selected housing units.

Microdata users frequently want to look at relationships among variables not shown in the standard products offered by the Census Bureau. The advantage of PUMS is that data users can tabulate data according to the characteristics they want or need to know about. For example, what are the characteristics of unemployed homeowners? What characteristics do families with four or more children have in common?

PUMS files are perfect for people, such as students, who are looking for greater accessibility to inexpensive data for research projects. Data users in academic life -- economists, psychologists, and sociologists -- have found the PUMS useful for regression analysis and modeling applications.

Datasets

Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) files are made available by the Census and contain microdata unpublished by regular Census publications. PUMS data is collected by the Decennial Census, American Community Survey, and other surveys conducted by the Census.

2000 Census PUMS Datasets
2000 Census Summary Data
American Community Survey PUMS Data
American Community Survey PUMS: 1996-2006
Data Archive
Dynamic custom-query access to a very large collection of public data sets: 1980-2010 Decennial Census Data, American Community Survey, Pop. Estimates, and Economic Indicators.
Data Ferret
A data mining and extraction tool that allows you to extract data into multiple formats and create tables, charts and graphs for presentations. The DataFerrett application must first be downloaded.

Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) This link opens in a new window
A free ICPSR account is required to download data. The account must be created and accessed every 6 months from on-campus or through the proxied link above. Visit this guide for more information.
Provides access to computerized social science data collected by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, a membership-based, not-for-profit organization serving member colleges and universities in the United States and abroad.

IPUMS-CPS
IPUMS-CPS is an integrated set of data from 49 years (1962-2010) of the March Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a monthly U.S. household survey conducted jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
IPUMS-USA
The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS-USA) consists of more than fifty high-precision samples of the American population drawn from fifteen federal censuses and from the American Community Surveys of 2000-2009. Some of these samples have existed for years, and others were created specifically for this database. These samples, which draw on every surviving census from 1850-2000, and the 2000-2009 ACS samples, collectively constitute our richest source of quantitative information on lo