Title: TIGER 2020 Census

Originator: U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau, Geography Divisision

Abstract:

The TIGER/Line Files are shapes and related database files that are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). The MTDB represents a seamless national file with no overlaps or gaps between parts, however, each TIGER/Line File is designed to stand alone as an independent data set, or they can be combined to cover the entire nation.

Census tracts are small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county or equivalent entity, and were defined by local participants as part of the 2010 Census Participant Statistical Areas Program. The Census Bureau delineated the census tracts in situations where no local participant existed or where all the potential participants declined to participate. The primary purpose of census tracts is to provide a stable set of geographic units for the presentation of census data and comparison back to previous decennial censuses. Census tracts generally have a population size between 1,200 and 8,000 people, with an optimum size of 4,000 people.

Block Groups (BGs) are defined before tabulation block delineation and numbering, but are clusters of blocks within the same census tract that have the same first digit of their 4-digit census block number from the same decennial census. For example, Census 2000 tabulation blocks 3001, 3002, 3003,.., 3999 within Census 2000 tract 1210.02 are also within BG 3 within that census tract. Census 2000 BGs generally contained between 600 and 3,000 people, with an optimum size of 1,500 people.

Census Blocks are statistical areas bounded on all sides by visible features, such as streets, roads, streams, and railroad tracks, and/or by nonvisible boundaries such as city, town, township, and county limits, and short line-of-sight extensions of streets and roads. Census blocks are relatively small in area; for example, a block in a city bounded by streets. However, census blocks in remote areas are often large and irregular and may even be many square miles in area. Blocks are the smallest geographic areas for which the Census Bureau publishes data from the decennial census. A block may consist of one or more faces.

The data describes conditions through July 2020.

The TIGER census data encompass three types of census layers:
-2020 Tracts
-2020 Block Groups
-2020 Blocks

Format: vector lines – ESRI Shape File

            Spatial Reference Information: Decimal Degrees, North American Datum 1983

Sample Tract map

Sample Block Groups map

Sample Blocks map