ZIP Code® Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs™)
ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs™) are a new statistical entity developed by the U.S. Census Bureau for tabulating summary statistics from Census 2000. This new entity was developed to overcome the difficulties in precisely defining the land area covered by each ZIP Code®. Defining the extent of an area is necessary in order to accurately tabulate census data for that area.
ZCTAs are generalized area representations of U.S. Postal Service (USPS) ZIP Code service areas. Simply put, each one is built by aggregating the Census 2000 blocks, whose addresses use a given ZIP Code, into a ZCTA which gets that ZIP Code assigned as its ZCTA code. They represent the majority USPS five-digit ZIP Code found in a given area. For those areas where it is difficult to determine the prevailing five-digit ZIP Code, the higher-level three-digit ZIP Code is used for the ZCTA code. For more information, please refer to the ZCTA (FAQ) Frequently Asked Questions Web page.
It is important to note the following:
- In most instances the ZCTA code equals the ZIP Code for an area
- In creating ZCTAs, the Census Bureau took the ZIP Code used by the majority of addresses in a area for the ZCTA code, some addresses will end up with a ZCTA code different from their ZIP Code.
- Some ZIP Codes represent very few addresses (sometimes only one) and therefore will not appear in the ZCTA universe.
- The term ZCTA was created to differentiate between this entity and true USPS ZIP Codes.
Information on the Census Bureau's position regarding ZIP Code data.
- ZCTA is a trademark of the U.S. Census Bureau; ZIP Code is a registered trademark of the U.S. Postal Service.
- The Census Bureau does not have U.S. Postal Service ZIP Code boundary files,
nor do we have information or possible sources of such files.
- Census Bureau data sets tabulated by ZIP Code are listed on the ZIP Code Statistics page.
The following items are available for ZCTAs:
The 2003, and later versions, of the TIGER/Line® files contain updated national ZCTAs reflecting U.S. Postal Service ZIP Code changes through October, 2002. There will be no further updates of ZCTAs until required for the 2010 Census.
As described above, the Census Bureau is tabulating the Census 2000 data by ZCTA, not U.S. Postal Service ZIP Code. Therefore, there are no ZIP Code products of any kind available from the Census 2000.
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Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Geography Division
Created: April 16, 2001
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