Ziptool Documentation

This tool is designed to analyze microdata from the American Community Survey (ACS) on a ZIP-code level. In an effort to anonymize data, the Census Bureau (perhaps surprisingly) publishes microdata only down to the PUMA (Public Use Microdata Area) level, each of which contains 100,000 people.

However, researchers often want community data at the ZIP code level. Using some geographical tricks, Ziptool allows users to obtain approximate data at the ZIP code level by querying the PUMA(s) it is inside.

The primary function of interest is data_by_zip, which takes a dataset and ZIP codes of interest and returns either summary statistics or the full data. However, many subfunctions are also documented and can be used standalone.

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
  • Installation
  • Obtaining Data
  • Extracting ZIP-level Data
• Background
• Modules
  • query_by_zip
  • fetch_data
  • geo_conversion
  • interface
  • utils
• Examples
  • Example 1: Introduction
  • Example 2: Cross-Correlations

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index

• Search Page