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Download state data from the Census Bureau API

Source: R/fetch_census.R
fetch_census.Rd

Retrieves a state-level variable from the American Community Survey 1-year estimates (default: total population, B01003_001E). This is an optional supplement: build_panel() takes population from BEA, which is available for every year. ACS 1-year estimates start in 2005, and the standard 2020 release does not exist, so that year is skipped.

Usage

fetch_census(
  years,
  variable = "B01003_001E",
  states = NULL,
  api_key = NULL,
  cache = TRUE,
  refresh = FALSE
)

Arguments

years

Years to download (2005 onward).

variable

ACS variable code.

states

States to download; any form accepted by harmonise_states(). NULL means all 50 states and DC.

api_key

Census API key. Defaults to the CENSUS_API_KEY environment variable. The Census API rejects requests without a key; register for a free one at https://api.census.gov/data/key_signup.html.

cache

Use the local download cache.

refresh

Ignore any cached copy and download again.

Value

A data frame with columns state, year, series, value and unit ("persons" for the default population variable, otherwise NA; look up other ACS variables in the Census documentation). Years that fail to download are skipped with a warning.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # nzchar(Sys.getenv("CENSUS_API_KEY"))
fetch_census(2019, states = c("CA", "TX"))
}