Migration Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) Data for Washington

SAS® Dataset for Washington

In- and out-migration flow data and the characteristics of these migrants for states and sub-state areas can only be derived from the individual state 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS). While in-migrants to any given state can be analyzed using that state's file, analysis of out-migration requires analyzing data from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The New York State Data Center has created this national migrant file from the individual state and area files in order to facilitate migration analysis of the 2000 Census.

The records included in the file available here contain the long-form responses for people who lived within Washington State in either 1995 or 2000. Using these responses, data users can develop their own tabulations of the characteristics of these movers and compare the characteristics of people moving into an area with those who left the area. Similar tabulations of the individuals who did not move can be generated directly from the Census Bureau's PUMS files.

The Census 2000 PUMS Migration data files are available in a format suitable for use with SAS® Software, Version 7.0 or above. These files may be downloaded as a self-extracting file called migpumswa.exe. Running migpumswa.exe will unzip three files:

  • migpumswa.sd7 - SAS® data set with the records of people residing in Washington during either 1995 or 2000 (122,749,952 bytes when extracted)
  • pmlabs.sas - value labels associated with each of the variables in the SAS data set (196,247 bytes when extracted)
  • puma1_areas.xls - total area and land area for each 1-percent Super-PUMA (89,600 bytes when extracted)

The file migrationreadme.pdf contains documentation for the PUMS migration file.

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

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.

Last modified: December 6, 2004
E-mail: OFM.Forecasting@ofm.wa.gov