The decennial Census with tidycensus

Last updated on 2025-06-10 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • How do you import decennial Census data into R Studio using tidycensus?
  • How do you process, query, wrangle, and visualize decennial Census data once it is imported into R Studio?

Objectives

  • Explain how to use tidycensus to import decennial Census data at various geographic scales, and various temporal periods, into your R Studio environment.
  • Process and query decennial Census data to explore simple questions, using the dplyr package
  • Visualize decennial Census data using the ggplot2 and *tmap packages
  • Export decennial Census datasets and visualizations from your R Studio environment to a local directory in various file formats.

Introduction

R 

library(tidycensus)
library(tmap)
library(tidyverse)

Retrieving decennial Census data

R 

# loads variable table for 2010 decennial census and assigns it to object named
# "decennial_variables_2010"
 decennial_variables_2010<-load_variables(2010, "sf1")

R 

# prints "decennial_variables_2010"
decennial_variables_2010

OUTPUT 

# A tibble: 8,959 × 3
   name    label                                concept
   <chr>   <chr>                                <chr>
 1 H001001 Total                                HOUSING UNITS
 2 H002001 Total                                URBAN AND RURAL
 3 H002002 Total!!Urban                         URBAN AND RURAL
 4 H002003 Total!!Urban!!Inside urbanized areas URBAN AND RURAL
 5 H002004 Total!!Urban!!Inside urban clusters  URBAN AND RURAL
 6 H002005 Total!!Rural                         URBAN AND RURAL
 7 H002006 Total!!Not defined for this file     URBAN AND RURAL
 8 H003001 Total                                OCCUPANCY STATUS
 9 H003002 Total!!Occupied                      OCCUPANCY STATUS
10 H003003 Total!!Vacant                        OCCUPANCY STATUS
# ℹ 8,949 more rows

R 

# brings up "decennial_variables_2010" in data Viewer
View(decennial_variables_2010)
name label concept
H001001 Total HOUSING UNITS
H002001 Total URBAN AND RURAL
H002002 Total!!Urban URBAN AND RURAL
H002003 Total!!Urban!!Inside urbanized areas URBAN AND RURAL
H002004 Total!!Urban!!Inside urban clusters URBAN AND RURAL
H002005 Total!!Rural URBAN AND RURAL
H002006 Total!!Not defined for this file URBAN AND RURAL
H003001 Total OCCUPANCY STATUS
H003002 Total!!Occupied OCCUPANCY STATUS
H003003 Total!!Vacant OCCUPANCY STATUS
H004001 Total TENURE
H004002 Total!!Owned with a mortgage or a loan TENURE
H004003 Total!!Owned free and clear TENURE
H004004 Total!!Renter occupied TENURE
H005001 Total VACANCY STATUS
H005002 Total!!For rent VACANCY STATUS
H005003 Total!!Rented, not occupied VACANCY STATUS
H005004 Total!!For sale only VACANCY STATUS
H005005 Total!!Sold, not occupied VACANCY STATUS
H005006 Total!!For seasonal, recreational, or occasional use VACANCY STATUS
H005007 Total!!For migrant workers VACANCY STATUS
H005008 Total!!Other vacant VACANCY STATUS
H006001 Total RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H006002 Total!!Householder who is White alone RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H006003 Total!!Householder who is Black or African American alone RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H006004 Total!!Householder who is American Indian and Alaska Native alone RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H006005 Total!!Householder who is Asian alone RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H006006 Total!!Householder who is Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H006007 Total!!Householder who is Some Other Race alone RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H006008 Total!!Householder who is Two or More Races RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007001 Total HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007002 Total!!Not Hispanic or Latino householder HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007003 Total!!Not Hispanic or Latino householder!!Householder who is White alone HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007004 Total!!Not Hispanic or Latino householder!!Householder who is Black or African American alone HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007005 Total!!Not Hispanic or Latino householder!!Householder who is American Indian and Alaska Native alone HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007006 Total!!Not Hispanic or Latino householder!!Householder who is Asian alone HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007007 Total!!Not Hispanic or Latino householder!!Householder who is Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007008 Total!!Not Hispanic or Latino householder!!Householder who is Some Other Race alone HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007009 Total!!Not Hispanic or Latino householder!!Householder who is Two or More Races HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER
H007010 Total!!Hispanic or Latino householder HISPANIC OR LATINO ORIGIN OF HOUSEHOLDER BY RACE OF HOUSEHOLDER

test

Cleaning and processing decennial Census datasets

Visualizing decennial Census data with ggplot2

Mapping decennial Census data with tmap

Working with multiple Census datasets

Exporting decennial Census datasets and analysis products from R Studio

This is a lesson created via The Carpentries Workbench. It is written in Pandoc-flavored Markdown for static files (with extension .md) and R Markdown for dynamic files that can render code into output (with extension .Rmd). Please refer to the Introduction to The Carpentries Workbench for full documentation.

What you need to know is that there are three sections required for a valid Carpentries lesson template:

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Challenge 1: Can you do it?

What is the output of this command?

R 

paste("This", "new", "lesson", "looks", "good")

OUTPUT 

[1] "This new lesson looks good"

Challenge 2: how do you nest solutions within challenge blocks?

You can add a line with at least three colons and a solution tag.

Figures

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R 

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  c(Sky = 78, "Sunny side of pyramid" = 17, "Shady side of pyramid" = 5), 
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  border = FALSE
)
pie chart illusion of a pyramid
Sun arise each and every morning

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Blue Carpentries hex person logo with no text.
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Math

One of our episodes contains \(\LaTeX\) equations when describing how to create dynamic reports with {knitr}, so we now use mathjax to describe this:

$\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}$ becomes: \(\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}\)

Cool, right?

Key Points

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