Add ACS Subject Tables

[laurenmarietta]

Unless I'm missing something, it seems as though the ACS Subject Tables are not available through the Census Reporter site.

I have no sense for how difficult it would be to integrate them, but for at least some topics - like occupation, S2401 - the subject tables hold more detailed and updated information than any of the available "detailed" (B/C) tables.

It would be great if the site made the data in those tables more accessible to folks.

P.S. I am a huge fan of the Census Reporter site! It is the best UI I have found for exploring ACS data. Kudos.

[JoeGermuska]

@laurenmarietta The simple answer is that Census doesn't make that very easy. The data we serve is what's available "in bulk", which is only the detailed tables.

Now that the Census API exists, we could look at strategies for including more of the ACS, such as subject tables, and maybe data profiles and comparison profiles. This wasn't an option when we designed the original site.

It seems kind of implausible to proactively use the API to retrieve all of the data from the ACS products which are not available for bulk download, although not strictly out of the question. But if we weren't to pre-retrieve the data, then the question is how effective it would be to make the call at request time.

A follow-on question is whether we could handle those other tables using the same basic system we use for detailed tables. It would be hard for the comparison profiles, which include historic data, and so have a different structure, but I think it would probably work for subject tables and demographic profile tables.

And, finally, the last question is how we secure the resources for that development!