README File for ACS 2004 Data Products Delivered via FTP

Data Available at this FTP Site

Three types of data products are provided on this site – core tables, profiles and ranking tables.

Core tables provide basic housing and population characteristics these tables are the foundation upon which higher-level profiles are built. The core tables come complete with the margin of error, as indicated by the upper and lower bounds around the estimate. These bounds represent the 90-percent confidence interval.

2004 Single-Year Profiles provide estimates of selected demographic, social, economic, and housing characteristics for each geographic area. The profiles come complete with the margin of error, as indicated by the upper and lower bounds around the estimate. These bounds represent the 90-percent confidence interval.

2000-2004 Multi-Year Profiles use estimates from the single-year tabular profiles to show year-to-year changes, the related percentage distributions, and whether the differences are statistically significant.

Ranking tables show how state and large jurisdictions compare to each other for 81 selected characteristics.

Finding the Data

Under the FTP directory, there are three sub-directories, Core_Tables, Ranking_Tables and Profiles.

Core Tables

The Core_Tables directory contains all of the published core detailed tables. The core detailed tables are stored in the Core_Tables directory by geography summary level, using the following naming convention "ACS_2004_" geography summary level ".zip". The geography levels are:

Geography summary level	Description

010	Nation

040	State

050	County

060	County Subdivision

155 Place - County (part)

160	Place

380	Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area/ Metropolitan Statistical Area

385	Primary Statistical Area

500	Congressional District Level (109th Congress)

001	ACS Test Site

Each one of these zipped files contain a csv file and MS Access Table with the following file layout [Variable name in brackets]:

Column 1-Geography ID [GEOID]

Column 2-Table ID [TBLID]

Column 3-Line Number within Table [ORDER]

Column 4-Direct Estimate [CEST]

Column 5-Lower Bound Estimate [CLB]

Column 6-Upper Bound Estimate [CUB]

There is also a file named ACS_2004_META.zip that contains a # delimited file ACS_2004_META.txt; this file contains all core table metadata with the following file layout [Variable name in brackets]:

Column 1-Table ID [TBLID]

Column 2-Line Number (A line number of 'T' represents the Core Table's Title) [ORDER]

Column 3-Stub [STUB]

There is also a file named geograpghy_key.xls this file contains which geography ID matches up to which geography name.

Profiles

The Profiles directory is subdivided into the following directories: 2000-2004_Profiles and 2004_Profiles. Each of these directories contains one spreadsheet for the United States and separate directories for each state (including the District of Columbia) and geographic summary level. The state directories contain one state spreadsheet and, depending upon the data available, up to eight subdirectories for the following geographic levels:

Geography summary level	Description

050	County

060	County Subdivision

155 Place - County (part)

160	Place

380	Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area/ Metropolitan Statistical Area

385	Primary Statistical Area

500	Congressional District Level (109th Congress)

001	ACS Test Site

The 2000-2004_Profiles and 2004_Profiles directories also contain subdirectories for files in an entire geographic summary level for example: the 050County directory contains all published counties regardless of state.

In the 2004_Profiles directories for an entire geographic summary level (example: 050County) there will also be a comma delimited file that contains all published geographies for that geography level with the naming convention of "total" geography summary level ".csv"; the file layout is as follows:

Column 1-Geography ID [geoid]

Column 2-Table ID [PROFTBL]

Column 3-Line Number within Table [PROFLN]

Column 4-Direct Estimate [CEST]

Column 5-Lower Bound Estimate [CLB]

Column 6-Upper Bound Estimate [CUB]

The geograpghy_key.xls file will also match up to the 2004 profiles geography, for reference purposes a key of what stub matches to what line is located at csv_2004_profile_layout.xls under the 2004_Profiles directory.

In the 2000-2004_Profiles directory there is file named total_multiyearprofile.csv this file contains all published 2000-2004 profiles in a csv format with the following layout:

Column 1-Geography Name [GEONAME]

Column 2-Table ID [PROFTBL]

Column 3-Line Number within Table [PROFLN]

Column 4-Stub [STUB]

Column 5-2000 Estimate [CURYRM4]

Column 6-2001 Estimate [CURYRM3]

Column 7-2002 Estimate [CURYRM2]

Column 8-2003 Estimate [CURYRM1]

Column 9-2004 Estimate [CURYR]

Note: 2000-2004 Estimates Data followed by an * indicates a Significant Difference at the 90 percent level between that data and the data from the most current year.

About the FTP Application

About the FTP Application About the FTP Application

This FTP (File Transfer Protocol) application is intended for users of census data, compressed files, and spreadsheet/database software. It provides quick access to data users, such as State Data Centers and news media, who need to begin their analysis immediately upon data release.

Each state directory provides all files available for the identified state. Once downloaded, the data are in Excel or PDF format. No software is provided. Users of the FTP application can then import it into the spreadsheet/database software of their choice for data analysis and table presentation. Other Sources of the Data Other Sources of the Data

FTP File Transfer

To facilitate transferring files, we suggest using features commonly found in most vendors' FTP utility. When testing the download in a PC environment, we used the ws_ftp product. This product, and many other FTP products developed for the PC environment, allows individual or multiple file selection using the control key or block multiple file selection using the shift key.

In the UNIX environment, the "mget" command allows the transferring of single or multiple files. Using the ftp command mget, followed by a single filename, will allow a single file to be downloaded. Using the command mget followed by a wildcard character such as *, or *.* , allows multiple files to be downloaded. For example, once you have navigated into the 2004 Profile directory for California, you can download all of the spreadsheets in the County Level subdirectory with the following ftp commands:

ftp>binary	(set file transfer mode to binary)

ftp>prompt off	(to avoid being asked for verification of each file, optional)

ftp>mget *.*	(to copy multiple files)

ftp>quit	(to exit ftp)