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Is block group level data available for the ACS 5-year survey before 2013 through the tidycensus R package? I am trying to collect consecutive years of population data for Gettysburg, PA, but I keep getting an error that block group level is an unsupported geography for all 5-year ACS survey calls prior to 2013 and all 1-year ACS survey calls. Any ideas are appreciated. The calls are copy-pasted below:

gbg0 <- get_acs(geography = "block group", var= "B01001_001", 
                                year = 2019, state = "PA", county = "Adams",
                                output = "tidy", geometry = T)
#This call works

gbg0 <- get_acs(geography = "block group", var= "B01001_001", 
                                year = 2012, state = "PA", county = "Adams",
                                output = "tidy", geometry = T)
#This call results in Error: Your API call has errors.  The API message returned is error: unknown/unsupported geography heirarchy

##This error follows for all 1-year ACS calls
wellma01
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1 Answers1

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The Census Bureau recently removed pre-2013 data from the API. It is not clear if it will be returned to the API. As a workaround you could use the Census FTP or NHGIS to access this data.

See more discussion on this tidycensus GitHub issue.

mfherman
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