Census Bureau 5-Percent Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) Data

SAS Dataset for Washington

The Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) file for Washington State Census 2000 data contain individual records of the characteristics for a 5 percent sample of people and housing units. The PUMS data are available for geographic units known as super-Public Use Microdata Areas (super-PUMAs) and Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs). Each super-PUMA contains a minimum population of 400,000 and each PUMA contains a minimum population threshold of 100,000.

The Census 2000 5 Percent PUMS data files are available in a format suitable for use with SAS® Software, Version 8.0 or above, in a Microsoft® Windows® environment. These files may be downloaded as a self-extracting file called SASPUMS5.EXE. Running SASPUMS5.EXE will unzip three files:

  • waprecs5.sas7bdat - person records (99,156,992 bytes when extracted)
  • wahrecs5.sas7bdat - household records (32,637,952 bytes when extracted)
  • wa5.sas7bvew - a view file for combining the person and the household records (37,888 bytes when extracted)

Complete technical documentation for the PUMS data is available as a 475-page PDF document from the U.S. Census Bureau website.

A list of variables contained in the PUMS files is available in the file pums5_layout.xls (Excel®).

Please refer to the following Excel files for code lists.

Migration and Place of Work PUMA relationships

Control Counts

Population and housing weighted and unweighted counts are available in the Excel file pums5_counts.xls.

The Census Bureau 5-Percent Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) Files page provides access to the actual PUMS data files as well as to technical documentation.

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Last modified: June 11, 2004
E-mail: OFM.Forecasting@ofm.wa.gov