Data Science Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for Data science professionals, Machine Learning specialists, and those interested in learning more about the field. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Ideally, I would like to add demographic features to my data. I have zip codes for each observation, so I was hoping to add in the demographic data by zip code. Unfortunately, I cannot find any demographic data by zip code.
Does anyone have any suggestions on using the zip code tabulation area data for zip codes?
Thanks!
The US Census American Community Survey can provide a lot of demographics by different geographies, including zip. Check out:
I'd second using US Census Data as was already mentioned in another answer.
As an additional source of government data with a bit more information about wages and income, you could also check out the aggregate ZIP code data provided by the IRS:
ZIP Code data show selected income and tax items classified by State, ZIP Code, and size of adjusted gross income. Data are based on individual income tax returns filed with the IRS and are available for Tax Years 1998, 2001, and 2004 through 2014. The data include items, such as:
- Number of returns, which approximates the number of households
- Number of personal exemptions, which approximates the population
- Adjusted gross income
- Wages and salaries
- Dividends before exclusion
- Interest received
I've used that to try to get at socioeconomic status in the past. It's helpful because you can, as one example, look at the percentage of income coming from interest and capital gains to get a sense for how wealthy and area is.
