Zip Code Transformer

Geo-Location Tool that Converts U.S. Zip Codes to U.S. County FIPS and Provides County FIPS Demographic Information

County-level demographic information includes 250+ variables, including things like county population, median income, education level, density, 2020 Presidential Election results, etc.

Description

1. Input File: CSV file like ExampleInput1.csv.

Two columns required.

• 1st Column: "ID"
• 2nd Column: "Zipcode"

2. Download Files and Run ZipCodeTransformer.R (need R to run, see here). Change the code to point to your CSV file and not the ExampleInput1.csv file. Make sure to install the necessary libraries (if not already installed).

3. Output File: CSV file with each inputted ID and Zip Code matched to FIPS/County (one or more since Zip Codes can span across multiple bordering U.S. counties) and 250+ demographic county-level variables, for instance, county population, median income, density, 2020 Election results, etc. See Sources below for more information regarding these demographic variables.

Issues

• Please note: U.S. Zip Codes can be in multiple bordering counties (around 20% of Zip Codes go across multiple counties). To address this concern, demographic variables are averaged across the multiple counties. For instance, the Zip Code 30517 in GA, an extreme case, goes across Barrow County, Gwinnett County, Hall County, and Jackson County (4 counties). Demographic variables are thus averaged across those 4 counties for this Zip Code.

Sources

Political demographics info from:

• https://github.com/tonmcg/US_County_Level_Election_Results_08-20/blob/master/2020_US_County_Level_Presidential_Results.csv

General county-level demographics from:

• https://github.com/JieYingWu/COVID-19_US_County-level_Summaries/blob/master/data/counties_only.csv

Citation

Please Cite As: Gollwitzer, A (2022) Zip Code Transformer (Version 1.0) [Source code]. https://github.com/AntonGollwitzer/ZipCodeTransformer

Contact

If any bugs/issues please fix or email anton.gollwitzer@gmail.com