Answered By: Bobray Bordelon
Last Updated: Mar 04, 2024     Views: 1755

  • For the United States
    • For 1980 to 1990 and vice versa, try MABLE Geocorr 90 Geographic Correspondence Engine. It is an interactive site that generates "correlation lists" between two geographic areas. On the list of areas are 1980 counties, 1990 counties, and 5-digit Postal Zip Code (circa 1991).
    • For 2000 geographic areas, see MABLE/Geocorr2000: Geographic Correspondence Engine with Census 2000 Geography
    • For the latest geography, see MABLE/Geocorr2022.
    • See "Code for merging ZIP code level datasets with the UDS Mapper ZIP code to ZCTA crosswalk".

    • National ZIP Code Crosswalk (1990-2020)

    • County FIPS Matching Tool: This handy tool by Carl Klarner provides a simple csv or Stata file for merging to your data to easily assign Census county FIPS codes to variously presented county names. County names collected from various sources, such as election returns, frequently present county names in a variety of ways and often have misspellings. This will make the process much easier. There are roughly 3000 counties, and this tool provides more than 70,000 variations for matching.

    • Also see US2010.  US2010 presents a Longitudinal Tract Data Base (LTDB), which provides public-use tools to create estimates within 2010 tract boundaries for any tract-level data (from the census or other sources) that are available for prior years as early as 1970.
    • HUD-USPS ZIP Crosswalk Files: There are 6 types of crosswalk files available for download. The first 3 crosswalk files are used to allocate ZIP codes to Census tracts, counties or Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSA). The last 3 are used to allocate Census tracts, counties or Core Based Statistical Areas to ZIP codes. It is important to note that the relationship between the 2 types of crosswalk files is not a perfectly inverse one. That is to say, you cannot use the ZIP to Tract crosswalk to allocate Census tract data to the ZIP code level. For that you would have to use the Tract to ZIP crosswalk file.
    • For geographies including school districts and state and legislative districts, use the Census site.
    • For assistance with boundary files, contact the GIS service in Lewis Library. 
    • Also see the Archive of Census Related Projects.
    • United States Congressional District Shapefiles provides digital boundary definitions for every U.S. congressional district in use between 1789 and 2012.
    • Use the FCC Area API to match census geography to latitudes/longitudes.
  • New Area- and Population-based Geographic Crosswalks for U.S. Counties and Congressional Districts, 1790-2020.  Crosswalks that allow researchers i) to harmonize U.S. county boundaries over time across Census decades and ii) to generate congressional district level variables from county-level data. 
  • While not matching files if looking for neighborhoods by census tract (and sometimes zip code tabulation area or county over the 2000s see NANDA.
  • For Canada
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