American Community Survey (ACS)

ACS-Summary File (SF)

ACS-Summary File (SF)

Special Note (May 12, 2008): Corrections to the ACS 2006 Final Summary File have been made to sequence numbers 0103 and 0139. See the Errata for for additional details. In addition the 2006 prototype version has been removed from the ftp site.

One of the data products supported by the long form in Census 2000 was the Summary File 3 (SF3). SF3 is basically a set of tables on a variety of subjects drawn from the long form that are repeated for all the supported geography down to the block group level. The final goal for ACS is to provide a set of summary files (i.e., a separate ACS-SF) for estimates from each time period the ACS will cover: one-year; three-year; and, five-year. As a step toward this goal, the ACS has developed a production version of the ACS-Summary File (SF).

The production version of the ACS-Summary File (SF) is based on the 2006 ACS detailed tables and is located on the ACS FTP site. The ACS-SF includes all detailed tables for all geographies published by the 2006 ACS. The main directory of the ACS-Summary File’s ftp server for 2006 production version is (http://www2.census.gov/acs2006/Final_Summaryfile) and for 2005 prototype version is (http://www2.census.gov/acs2005/summaryfile). Each site has documentation on using the ACS-Summary File and 53 subdirectories, for the United States, the 50 states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and SAS program examples. The summary file is available in three formats - the estimate, the standard error, and the margins of error. The README file in the main ftp directory for each year contains information on the files and their purpose. A layout of the directory structure of the FTP site is available on: Layout of FTP Site [PDF 62k].

Please review the Technical Documentation before accessing the ACS Summary File on the FTP site. This documentation is located on the following link: ACS-Summary File (SF) Technical Documentation.

The Census Bureau and American Community Survey Office hopes that this production version of the ACS-SF will give data users a chance to work with this set of files and provide the Census Bureau with useful comments. The Census Bureau will consider any comments that it receives on the production version of the ACS-SF.

[PDF] or denotes a file in Adobe’s Portable Document Format. To view the file, you will need the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader available free from Adobe. This symbol indicates a link to a non-government web site. Our linking to these sites does not constitute an endorsement of any products, services or the information found on them. Once you link to another site you are subject to the policies of the new site.