CMU LibGuides: Economics: 73-265 Economics and Data Science: Finding Public Datasets

Google Dataset Search

Try Google's dataset search. Search the web for datasets on any topic.

Citing Data

Citing data in your writing, posters, and presentations is an important step in providing credit to the data producer, but also allowing readers to better understand your findings and research and to build on your work by using the same data to answer different questions.

The elements that should be included in a complete citation of data are:

Author(s)
Title
Year of publication
Publisher or distributor
URL, identifier, or other access location

Many sources of data provide examples of citations in different citation styles to make citing those sources easy. In other cases, you'll have to create the citation yourself, depending on the citation style you're using. Here is a quick guide to citing data in different citation styles:

Link to the Quick Guide to Data Citation

Federal Research Economic Data (FRED) - Federal Reserve

Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) is a database maintained by the Research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It consists of hundreds of thousands of economic data time series from U.S., international, public, and private sources. To date, there are 825,000 US and international time series from 114 sources.

FRED is one of the go-to economics data resources for research purposes and has been used by many academics and researchers across the globe.

US Demographic Data

US Census
This is the home page of the US Census website. From here, you can find quick links to frequently sought after data and statistics, and links to more information about the US Census. The US Census has many data collection program including the Decennial Census, the American Community Survey, the Economic Census, Current Population Survey, Survey of Business Owners and more.
American Community Survey
Collected on a rolling basis, the ACS samples the population during inter-Census years for data covering demographics, education, employment, and other topics.
Census Microdata
The US Census' tool for accessing microdata from the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey.
Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS--University of Minnesota - Minnesota Population Center)
IPUMS-USA provides microdata on the American population drawn from the federal censuses and American Community Survey from 1850 to the present. IPUMS-International is dedicated to collecting and distributing census data from around the world. IPUMS also provides custom data extracts from numerous other surveys and censuses.

Local and Regional Data

Western PA Regional Data Center
"The Data Center maintains Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh’s open data portal, and provides a number of services to data publishers and users. The Data Center also hosts datasets from these and other public sector agencies, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations."
Allegheny County Analytics
Provided by the Allegheny Country Dept of Human Services, this portal provides data sets, publications, visualizations and more to support data analytics for topics related to populations and services in Allegheny County.
Allegheny County GIS Open Data
For spatial data sets related to Allegheny County, including a broad range of topic areas from health and social services to business and the environment.
Open Data Pennsylvania
The state of Pennsylvania's open data portal. Provides access to data at the state and county level across a broad range of topics.

US Economic, Housing and Labor Statistics

Bureau of Labor Statistics
Principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics.
Bureau of Economic Analysis
National, international, regional, and industry accounts measures, such as GDP, government expenditures, balance of payments, etc. Federal Reserve Economic Database.
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)'s Public Use Data Archive
The NBER data collection is an eclectic mix of public use economic, demographic, and enterprise data.
American Housing Survey
Sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the American Housing Survey collects a wide range of data on size, composition, and quality of the nation’s housing.
Household Pulse Survey
This survey was implemented during the pandemic to help capture the social economic impacts of COVID-19. The survey asks questions about how childcare, education, employment, energy use, food security, health, housing, household spending, Child Tax Credit payments, and intention to receive a COVID-19 vaccination, have been affected by the ongoing crisis.