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how to apply a county label to a zcta in medicare dataset

by Keon Oberbrunner Published 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago
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Is the ZCTA code the same as the ZIP code?

In most instances the ZCTA code is the same as the ZIP Code for an area. In creating ZCTAs, the Census Bureau took the most frequently occurring ZIP Code in an area for the ZCTA code. Some addresses will end up with a ZCTA code different from their ZIP Code.

How do I link ztca regions to counties?

This file links Ztca regions — the Census version of ZIP codes, to counties, by associating a Zcta with the county that contains the Zctas centroid. There are only about 1/2 the number of Zctas in this file ( 33K ) as there are ZIP codes ( about 77K )

What is a ZCTA?

ZCTA stands for ZIP Code Tabulation Area and is the US Census’s take on representing the topology of ZIP codes. These are produced for the q10y census. There are different ZCTAs for the 2000 Census and 2010 Census (as of 12/2020).

What is a ZIP code tabulation area?

ZCTA stands for ZIP Code Tabulation Area and is the US Census’s take on representing the topology of ZIP codes. These are produced for the q10y census.

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Is ZCTA the same as ZIP code?

In most instances the ZCTA code is the same as the ZIP Code for an area. In creating ZCTAs, the Census Bureau took the most frequently occurring ZIP Code in an area for the ZCTA code. Some addresses will end up with a ZCTA code different from their ZIP Code.

How are ZIP codes determined?

ZIP Codes are numbered with the first digit representing a certain group of U.S. states, the second and third digits together representing a region in that group (or perhaps a large city) and the fourth and fifth digits representing a group of delivery addresses within that region.

What is a block group in Census data?

Block Groups (BGs) are statistical divisions of census tracts, are generally defined to contain between 600 and 3,000 people, and are used to present data and control block numbering.

Do census tracts match ZIP codes?

A unique set of census blocks, and hence demographics, can be associated with each census tract. There is no good way to associate census blocks with ZIP codes.

How do I create a ZIP Code?

To create a personal Zip, a postal customer would go to a postal web site, authenticate who they are, much as they do today to sign up for Informed Delivery, and provide their current address and, optionally, email address. The system would provide them their own 11 (or 12) digit Personal Zip Code.

What is a ZIP Code example?

Standard US ZIP codes The standard ZIP code notation used by the United States Postal service uses five digits to identify a delivery area. An example of a standard US ZIP code is 90210.

What is smaller than counties?

In most Midwestern and Northeastern states, counties are further subdivided into townships or towns, which sometimes exercise local powers or administration. Throughout the United States, counties may contain other independent, self-governing municipalities.

What is the difference between census tract and block group?

A block group is a subdivision of a census tract and contains a cluster of blocks. Block groups usually have between 250 and 550 housing units. A census block is the smallest geographic census unit. Blocks can be bounded by visible features—such as streets—or by invisible boundaries, such as city limits.

Can a county cross state lines?

No county set crosses state lines. All counties within any county set are within the same state. Counties are grouped within MSAs if possible.

Do census tracts fit in counties?

A standard census tract must be entirely within one county and cannot cross into another county. Census tracts do not have to follow other boundaries, such as places or county subdivisions.

Do zip codes align with counties?

Approximately 98% of counties and 95% of cities overlap with a ZIP code and are included.

Can a census tract have multiple zip codes?

When a Census tract, county or CBSA is split by a ZIP code, that tract, county or CBSA code is duplicated in the crosswalk file. In the example below tract 01001020200 is split by two different ZIP codes, 36008 and 36067, which appear in the ZIP column.

What is ZCTa in census?

US Census (ZCTA) The US Census used to distribute their summary files via FTP for their 2000 census and 2020 census. [Note: those are links to the Summary File 1, which doesn’t include rurality. Those are in Summary File 2.]

Can you get county data from ZIP code?

ZIP Codes have limitations since they were designed for mail delivery and not for population details. You can easily get county data from these data as well. In epidemiological studies (especially EMR and survey data), you’ll almost certainly have a ZIP code or county, and almost never a census tract. It’s easy to find census data sets, but finding ...

Documentation

This file links Ztca regions — the Census version of ZIP codes, to counties, by associating a Zcta with the county that contains the Zctas centroid.

Accessing Package in Metapack

import metapack as mp pkg = mp.open_package ('http://library.metatab.org/census.gov-zcta_county-1.1.1.csv') # Create Dataframes county_zcta_df = pkg.resource ('county_zcta').dataframe ()

What is a ZCTa?

The term ZCTA was created to differentiate between this entity and true USPS ZIP Codes. ZCTA is a trademark of the U.S. Census Bureau; ZIP Code is a trademark of the U.S. Postal Service.

What does XX mean in the census?

For the Census 2000 ZCTAs the Census Bureau created ZCTAs that ended in "XX" to represent large areas of land without ZIP Codes or "HH" to represent large areas of water without ZIP Codes. For the 2010 Census, large water bodies and large unpopulated land areas do not have ZCTAs.

Is a ZIP code the same as a ZCTa?

ZIP Codes assigned to businesses only or single delivery point address will not necessarily appear as ZCTAs. In most instances the ZCTA code is the same as the ZIP Code for an area. In creating ZCTAs, the Census Bureau took the most frequently occurring ZIP Code in an area for the ZCTA code. Some addresses will end up with a ZCTA code different ...

Overview

Data.Medicare.gov lists official data used on the Medicare.gov Compare websites and directories. We want to make this data available in open, accessible, and machine-readable formats.

Getting started

Visit Data.Medicare.gov to see all datasets that are available and ready to use.

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Linking Zip to County

  • There’s a dataset on the HUD website here, on the “select crosswalk type” dropdown, select ZIP-County. From my read, this is ZCTA ZIP code for more recent datasets, but that isn’t explicitly stated.
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Demographics

  • US Census
    The US Census used to distribute their summary files via FTP for their 2000 census and 2020 census. [Note: those are links to the Summary File 1, which doesn’t include rurality. Those are in Summary File 2.]These 39 and 47 files that must be merged by some convoluted process that I’…
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Social Determinants of Health

  • There are a few conceptual frameworks for SDOH. Here’s Healthy People 2030. I like the KFF’s Figure 1 here, which defines the following factors (note there’s plenty of overlap between Healthy People 2030 and KFF): 1. Economic stability – Employment, income, expenses, debt, medical bills, support. 1.1. IRS Income, zip code: https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/zip-code-data 1.2. Minimu…
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Rurality

  • RUCA codes
    There was a bug in the 2010 US Census-derived RUCA-ZIP and the linkage was updated in 2020, and can be found here. I’m trying to figure out whether RUCA is most similar to ZCTA or USPS ZIP Codes. I’ll come back and update what I find out. Update: I didn’t get a response to my inquiry. Si…
  • American Housing Survey (AHS) from HUD
    Urbanization Perceptions Small Area Index. This was self-reported neighborhood as urban, suburban, or rural. Link is here.
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Health Data

  • County health rankings
    Much county-level data can be obtained from the excellent County Health Rankings website from UWI, sponsored by RWJF. These include “ranked” and “unranked” data, the sources of these datapoints are listed in the Excel files that you can download on the website (eg, Vermont’s is he…
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Other

  • CBSA – Core-based statistical area
    The White House’s OMB defines the CBSA, which is broadly metropolitan areas. So NYC has NYC itself as well as the suburban areas of NYC (NJ, Westchester, etc.) HUD provides USPS ZIP crosswalk here.
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