HUD-USPS ZIP Crosswalk Files

One of the many challenges that social science researchers and practitioners face is the difficulty of relating data between census tracts which are re-delineated with each decennial census. While some methods of harmonizing or crosswalking data between census tracts exist, to provide additional avenues for merging these data, PD&amp;R has released the HUD-USPS Census Tract Crosswalk Files. These unique files are derived from the USPS Vacancy Data which are regularly updated by the USPS which makes them uniquely positioned to describe human settlements patterns between census tract delineations. These data use the locations of ZIP+4 centroids, an extremely granular level of geography, the number of addresses of various types (residential, business, other, and total), and do not rely on ancillary data to map where population or households might be located.<br><br>There are twelve types of crosswalk files available for download. The first six crosswalk files are used to allocate ZIP codes to Census Bureau geographies such as census tracts, counties, county subdivisions, Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs), CBSA Divisions, and Congressional Districts. The last six are used to allocate from those same Census Bureau geographies to ZIP Codes. It is important to note that the relationship between the two types of crosswalk files is not perfectly inverse. That is to say, the ZIP to Tract crosswalk file cannot be used to allocate data from census tract geographies to ZIP codes. Instead, the Tract to ZIP crosswalk file must be used in that specific scenario.<br><br>In addition to the crosswalk files, this dataset also includes screenshots of HUDs documentation and FAQ pages.<br><br><br>