The 2020 Decennial Census

Revised June 3, 2024

Data Releases

In May 2023, the Bureau released two important data products.

The Demographic Profile (DP) tables include selected demographic and housing characteristics about local communities down to the place (cities, towns) and minor civil divisions (townships, etc.). Subjects will include five-year age groups, sex, race, ethnicity, household type and relationship, group quarters population, housing occupancy, and housing tenure. These tables will be comparable to the 2010 Demographic Profiles that MCDC holds at dpro2010.

The Demographic and Housing Characteristics (DHC) files represent the "big data" from the 2020 Census, down to the block level in many cases. These are the new version of 2010's Summary File 1, with numerous table changes. As before, some tables are repeated by race and ethnicity; however, several new tables include 34 different race/ethnicity combinations, rather than the nine used in 2010. Subjects include age, sex, race, ethnicity, household type, family type, relationship to householder, group quarters population, housing occupancy, and housing tenure.

Later in 2023, the Bureau released the Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics (Detailed DHC) file. There are two files, A and B, available down to the county level. Detailed DHC-A provides population counts and sex and age characteristics for approximately 370 detailed racial and ethnic groups and about 1,200 American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages. Detailed DHC-B provides household type and tenure characteristics for the same groups and areas.

MCDC Data Holdings

To access any of the data collections we have for the 2020 census using the MCDC's Uexplore/Dexter application, go to the Decennial Census 2020 section of the Uexplore directory page, which includes links to the relevant data directories. We currently the following Census 2020 data in our collection:

• PL94-171 (redistricting) data: Includes race, ethnicity, voting age, and housing unit counts for all blocks, places, and counties in the United States.
• Demographic and Housing Characteristics (DHC) file, complete: This is the primary data product based on the 2020 decennial census, released in the summer of 2023. The tables include basic demographics (age, sex, race, hispanic origin, household types, etc.). This data directory contains the full tables.
• Demographic and Housing Characteristics standard extracts: These datasets are much smaller extracts of the complete DHC mentioned above.

We will add more 2020 data as it becomes available.

MCDC Applications

The Census 2020 DHC Extract Assistant application presents a front end to the Dexter application specifically tailored for MCDC's DHC extracts data collection. The application offers choices of geographic areas (entire U.S., selected states, and/or counties), summary levels, and broad subject areas. For example, a user can request block- or block-group-level data for any state or states in the U.S.

The CAPS 2020 (circular area profiles) application works with census-block-level data from the 2020 DHC file.

We have also incorporated some of the new 2020 geographies into our Mable22 database and Geocorr 2022 web application.