The U.S. Census Bureau has recently released the Census 2010 Summary File (SF-1) that includes a compilation of the data by Zip Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs).  ZCTAs are an approximation of the U.S. Postal Service zip codes and are actually aggregates of small census-defined areas called blocks.  Since ZCTAs generally match zip code areas very closely, for the purposes of this article we will use the terms ZCTA and zip code interchangeably.  For more information on ZCTAs, please see our blog posting “What’s a ZCTA?”  

Zip code data is especially valuable for market research, target marketing, and sales planning, since zip codes represent a fairly small (on average zip codes cover about 9,400 people) homogenous area that can be matched to readily available mailing address lists.  And since the decennial census is a 100% count of the population, census data provides a truly complete snapshot of the American population as a whole. 

To see the data from the new Summary File, go to the on-line American Factfinder tool and select the 2010 SF1 100% Data Set under Topics.  You can then select ZIP code/ZCTA as a geographic filter and find the specific geography and data table of interest.  For a list of zip codes more typical of a customer mailing list, however, it is easier to use our software CDXZipStream which has a selection of the more important demographic variables from the 2010 Census.  These variables, covering age, population, households, and race data, are: 

1. Population

2. MalePopulation

3. FemalePopulation

4. MedianAge

5. MedianAgeMale

6. MediaAgeFemale

7. HouseholdsPerZipcode

8. PersonsPerHousehold

9. AsianPopulation

10. BlackPopulation

11. HawaiianPopulation

12. HispanicPopulation

13. OtherPopulation

14. IndianPopulation

15. WhitePopulation

These are part of the Premium Zip Code data feed, available with the Demographic, Premium, and Premium ACS versions of our Excel add-in software CDXZipStream.  Please see the version comparison webpage for more information on other features of these versions.

To obtain data for these fields for a list of zip codes in Microsoft Excel, place your cursor on the first zip code and click on the CDXZipStream logo on the main toolbar.  Just select the fields of interest, and click “Get Data”.  The data is returned (with optional field headings) like this:

You can also view the YouTube Video “Demographic Data in Excel” for a quick demonstration of how to get demographics for long zip code lists using this method.

The 2010 decennial census results are slowly being released by the Census Bureau, and you may have seen news reports since last December about redistricting and demographic data, provided on a state-by-state basis.  However, one of the more important releases of interest to business and other organizations looking for demographic data, will occur over the summer months of 2011, from June to August, of what's referred to as Summary File 1 or SF-1.

SF-1 is also issued state-by-state, but will include data all the way down to the smallest geographies of block and census tract.  (For a review of Census Bureau geography types, please see our blog article Census Geography - It's not Quite What You Learned in School.)  What data will SF-1 include?  Since the 2010 Census did not include a long-form version and covered only ten questions, the results are somewhat limited, to the following areas:

- Population counts for 63 race categories and Hispanic or Latino

- Population counts for many detailed race and Hispanic or Latino categories, and American Indian and Alaska Native tribes

- Selected population and housing characteristics, such as household and family information by age, size, and type

Attached for your reference is an Excel file listing all the data fields of SF-1: Census 2010 Summary File 1 Fields.xls (946.00 kb)

Other socioeconomic data, covering areas such as income, educational attainment, school enrollment, and occupation, are now collected with the American Community Survey, or ACS.  The ACS is performed annually by the US Census Bureau and results can be combined over a several year period to obtain statistically significant data for smaller census geographies.  The CDXZipStream ACS Premium version currently provides ACS data for states, counties, cities, and Core Based Statistical Areas for the years 2005-2009.  Zip code data, for both the 2010 decennial census and the ACS, will not be available until 2012-2013.

Assuming SF-1 is released by August, we expect to have portions of this data available in CDXZipStream by our regularly scheduled data update at the end of September 2011.  The following fields will be covered by CDXZipStream, and we are now soliciting input from our clients to determine if there are any other fields of interests we should add, either to the standard product or a customized version:

Please contact us at support@CDXTech.com if you would like to provide input to the CDXZipStream data feed for Census 2010 data.  If you are interested in your own customized database of Census 2010 data, you can contact customsolutions@CDXTech.com for a free quote.