ACS 5-year Household Income Brackets (block Group)

Overview

The ACS 5-Year Household Income Brackets dataset reports household counts across 16 income brackets for every Census block group in the United States. Where the companion median-income dataset reports a single summary statistic per block group, this dataset reports the full distribution behind that median — letting researchers compute poverty shares, top-bracket shares, inequality measures (Gini coefficient, P90/P10 ratio), and bracket-weighted aggregations the median alone cannot support.

Published annually by the U.S. Census Bureau as part of the ACS 5-year estimates program, which pools five years of survey responses to provide statistically reliable estimates at small geographies.

Data Description

Each row carries the geoid, state/county FIPS, tract, block_group, name, year_end, vintage, total household count (hh_income_total), 16 bracket count columns (hh_income_lt_10k, hh_income_10_15k, ..., hh_income_150_200k, hh_income_gte_200k), and paired margin-of-error columns at the 90% confidence level.

Bracket counts sum to hh_income_total (modulo rounding). Income brackets are defined in nominal dollars of the release ending year, so direct cross-year comparison is affected by inflation.

Income values are reported in nominal dollars of the release ending year — not adjusted for inflation. Use the BLS CPI or BEA implicit deflator for real-dollar comparisons.

Coverage

Geographic Coverage: All Census block groups in the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Approximately 220,000-242,000 block groups per release year depending on Census's BG redraws.

Temporal Coverage: ACS 5-year releases ending 2013 through 2024 (12 release years). Block-group data for ACS releases prior to year_end 2013 is not exposed via the Census Data API (only available as static ZIP files on census.gov).

Observation Level: One row per Census block group per ACS 5-year release year per geometry vintage (keyed by geoid + year_end + vintage).

Vintage Information: Two block-group geographic vintages appear across these datasets because the U.S. Census Bureau redrew block-group boundaries after the 2020 Decennial Census. A vintage column distinguishes the two: '2010' for releases ending 2013-2021 (using 2010 Census BG boundaries) and '2020' for releases ending 2022 and later (using 2020 Census BG boundaries).Block-group GEOIDs do not align 1:1 between vintages — the same physical land area can have a different GEOID before and after the 2020 redraw. Cross-vintage joins should use a Census-published block-group relationship file.

Methodology

Pulled from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates via the public Census Data API

Each annual release is the average of five years of survey responses. Block-group estimates are computed by Census using its standard survey-weight methodology.

Additional Notes

All Census Bureau data is in the public domain.

This dataset shares the same geographic key (geoid) and temporal columns (year_end, vintage) as the other Census datasets, so they can be joined row-for-row within a vintage.

Licensing and redistribution. U.S. Census Bureau data products are works of the United States Government and are not subject to copyright: "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government" (17 U.S.C. § 105). Dewey redistributes this processed extract on that public-domain basis. The Census Bureau requests (but does not require) citation, and prohibits using the data to "identify any individual person, household, business or other entity" — a confidentiality obligation that passes through to users of this dataset. This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.