Error in get_decennial() when geography is tract about tidycensus

[walkerke]

Tract data is only available by state, so you'll need to supply a vector of states to the states parameter. The following code works:

st <- c(datasets::state.abb, "DC")

library(tidycensus)
tables <- c("P0030002","P0030003","P0030004","P0030005","P0030006","P0030007","P0030008")
us_tract_pop_2010<-get_decennial(geography = "tract", variables = tables, 
                                 summary_var = "P0030001", state = st)

[pssguy]

Thanks that works inc a vector of all states . I was trying to work it out from your code

So if i wanted block groups I would need to enter both state and county? I tried just the states or just the county GEOIDs and get the same generic error as before

and does 1990 differ from 2000 2010
viz.
"At the moment, tracts and block groups for 1990 require specifying a county"

[walkerke]

Correct, block groups are only available from the API by county. I have some logic under the hood in tidycensus to allow for multi-county calls for block groups by state; however multi-state calls would require iterating through every county in each state which I don't have built in. You could conceivably do this with purrr though you might also consider NHGIS (http://www.nhgis.org) if you want bulk block group data for the entire country.

Also: yes, the API makes tract data for 1990 only available by county, like with block groups for later years.