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 (109^th^ 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 (109^th^ 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**

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**

**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)