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Get multiple years of ACS data for time series analysis

Source: R/get_acs_ts.R
get_acs_ts.Rd

get_acs_ts() is a variant on get_acs_geographies() that supports downloading data for multiple years in addition to multiple tables or multiple geographies. The year is appended as an additional column in the returned data frame. The intended use is to provide the latest year needed and the function will download data for all non-overlapping survey periods. For example, 2021 ACS data using the 5-year sample can be compared to 5-year data from 2016 and 2011. Not all variables can be compared across different years and caution is recommended when using ACS data for time series analysis.

Usage

get_acs_ts(
  geography,
  variables = NULL,
  table = NULL,
  cache_table = TRUE,
  year = 2021,
  state = NULL,
  county = NULL,
  survey = "acs5",
  ...,
  quiet = FALSE
)

Arguments

geography

Required character vector of one or more geographies. See https://walker-data.com/tidycensus/articles/basic-usage.html#geography-in-tidycensus for supported options. Defaults to c("county", "state") for get_acs_geographies(). If a supplied geography does not support county and state parameters, these options are dropped before calling tidycensus::get_acs(). Any required parameters are also bound to the returned data frame as new columns.

variables

Character string or vector of character strings of variable IDs. tidycensus automatically returns the estimate and the margin of error associated with the variable.

table

A character vector of tables.

cache_table

Whether or not to cache table names for faster future access. Defaults to FALSE; if TRUE, only needs to be called once per dataset. If variables dataset is already cached via the load_variables function, this can be bypassed.

year

A numeric vector of years. If length 1, the function uses acs_survey_ts() to get data for all comparable survey years back to the start of the ACS. This is the recommended approach for using get_acs_ts(). If length is greater than 1, return the selected years even if those years may not be valid to compare.

state

An optional vector of states for which you are requesting data. State names, postal codes, and FIPS codes are accepted. Defaults to NULL.

county

The county for which you are requesting data. County names and FIPS codes are accepted. Must be combined with a value supplied to `state`. Defaults to NULL.

survey

The ACS contains one-year, three-year, and five-year surveys expressed as "acs1", "acs3", and "acs5". The default selection is "acs5."

...

Other keyword arguments

quiet

If FALSE (default), leave cli.default_handler option unchanged. If TRUE, set cli.default_handler to suppressMessages temporarily with rlang::local_options()

Value

A data frame or sf object.