countyfips

countyfips is a simple Stata crosswalk program for adding various county-level identifiers (name, FIPS, Census codes) that may be missing from your dataset. The purpose of this program is to facilitate merging datasets that do not share a common identifier.

Prerequisites

Stata: countyfips is compatible with Stata version 12.1+. It may be compatible with previous versions, but it has not been tested in those environments.

Installation

Github (for Stata v13.1+): Run the following via the Stata command line.

net install countyfips, from(https://raw.github.com/cbgoodman/countyfips/master/) replace

Github (for Stata v12.1+): Download the zipped file of this repository. Unzip on your local computer. Run the following code via the Stata command line replacing with the location of the unzipped repository on your computer.

net install countyfips, from(<local source>) replace

Using countyfips

countyfips offers four methods of merging using either county names, five-digit county FIPS codes, the combination of two-digit state FIPS and three-digit county FIPS codes, or the combination of two-digit state Census codes and three-digit county Census codes.

Merging with name where county is the name of variable containing county name as a string requires either statefips or statecode to be specified

. countyfips, name(county) statefips(stfips)

or

. countyfips, name(county) statecode(stcode)

Merging with fips, where countyfips is the name of the variable containing the 5-digit FIPS code

. countyfips, fips(county)

Merging with statefips and countyfips, where stfips and cofips are the names of the variables containing the 2-digit state FIPS and 3-digit county FIPS codes

. countyfips, statefips(stfips) countyfips(cofips)

Merging with statecode and countycode, where stcode and cocode are the names of the variables containing the U.S. Census Bureau Census of Governments state and county codes

. countyfips, statecode(stcode) countycode(cocode)

By default, countyfips will generate a new variable, _merge, to indicate the merged results. If you do not want to create this variable, specify nogenerate. This will keep matched observations and unmatched master observations.

. countyfips, fips(county) nogenerate

Data Examples:

Merging with 5-digit FIPS codes

. webuse texas_ue.dta
. countyfips, fips(fips)

Merging with 2-digit state FIPS and 3-digit county FIPS codes

. webuse homicide1990.dta
. countyfips, countyfips(cfips) statefips(sfips)

Common Issues

Permissions

The first time you run countyfips it creates a data file that lives in your personal ado directory (by default, Windows: c:\ado\; macOS: ~/Documents/Stata/ado). With macOS in particular, the data file is created from countyfips_data.ado that lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Stata. In versions of OSX 10.7 and newer, this folder may be protected, lacking sufficient read-write permissions for countyfips to create the necessary file. If you are receiving an error that /Users/foo/Documents/Stata/ado/personal/countyfips_data/countyfips.dta not found, please check your permissions.

To find the relevant folder to check, run the following code and ensure your user account has read-write permissions for the relevant folders (see here for instructions on how to change folder permissions).

. sysdir

The PLUS folder must have read-write permissions. Once the permissions are changed, you can run countyfips with no arguments to create the necessary file. To confirm the necessary file exists, run the following code:

. findfile countyfips.dta, path("`c(sysdir_personal)'countyfips_data/")

If it returns with no error, you are ready to go.

Missing Folder

On macOS, you must ensure the ~/Documents/Stata/ado/personal folder exists. By default, Stata creates the ~/Documents/Stata folder but none of the sub-directories. If you have eliminated permissions as the issue (in the above example), check if the full sub-directory folder tree exists. If the required folders do not exist, create them and run the following code to confirm the necessary file exists.

. findfile countyfips.dta, path("`c(sysdir_personal)'countyfips_data/")

If it returns with no error, you are ready to go.

Limitations

• Using countyfips with the name option requires specific formatting of the name variable. County names must not include "county" after the name. County names beginning with "Saint" such as Saint Louis must be abbreviated to "St" (no period). County names with apostrophes are included ("PRINCE GEORGE'S" County, MD)
• FIPS codes are available for U.S counties, county equivalents, and territories. Census codes are only available for counties or county equivalents (such as independent cities).
• FIPS codes for Virginia independent cities as well as merged county and independent cities (as is the practice for some areas in BEA data) are included. Using countyfips with the name option will require extremely particular formatting. Additionally, only the statefips option will work when merging with name.
• countyfips uses the more recent FIPS code for Miami-Dade county (12086) rather than the FIPS code for Dade county (12025). The Census state (10) and county (13) codes remain unchanged.

Bugs

Please report any bugs here.