Research Guides: Data: Data Axle Historical Databases

Data Axle Historical Databases

(Ohio State log-in required)

Overviews

Historical Business Database (1997-present)

Geocoded, establishment-level data for millions of U.S. businesses, including the company name, location, industry classification code, number of employees, sales volume, and more.

Data Axle Business File Layout (.csv)
Layout file/data dictionary for business data files

Historical Residential Database (2006-present)

Geocoded, household-level data for millions of U.S. residences, including length of residence, own/rent status, home value, household income and wealth, and more.

Data Axle Residential File Layout (.csv)
Layout file/data dictionary for residential data files

SIC & NAICS Code Overview
Overview of the industry classification code fields. NOTE: Data Axle uses proprietary SIC codes for first order categorization, then maps these to standard NAICS codes.
SIC & NAICS Code Mapping
Mapping of proprietary Data Axle SIC codes to standard NAICS codes
Data Axle Location Employee Size
Overview of the location employee size field
Data Axle Parent Employee Size
Overview of the parent employee size field
Geocoding Overview
Overview of geocodes and other geographic fields

Format:

1997-2020: one zip file per year with individual csv files for each state/territory
2021-present: one gz archive containing a single csv file for all states/territories

Sample script for unpacking the gz archive and subsetting by state:

data-axle_extraction-demo (.R)

Residential/Consumer Data Sourcing
Overview of data sourcing, compilation, and validation
Data Axle WealthFinder Model
Overview of the wealthfinder score field
Data Axle Household Income Model (FIND)
Overview of the household income field (Family Income Detector or FIND)
Geocoding Overview
Overview of geocodes and other geographic fields

Format:

2006-present: one zip file per year with individual csv files for each state/territory

Recommended Citation

Citation Format:

Data Axle (n.d.). {Database Name}, {Archive Years} [Data set]. Retrieved {Access Date} from The Ohio State University Libraries Research Commons. {Catalog URL}

Example - Business Database:

Data Axle (n.d.). U.S. Historical Businesses, 2022 [Data set]. Retrieved March 8, 2023 from The Ohio State University Libraries Research Commons. https://library.ohio-state.edu/record=e1002559~S7

Example - Residential Database:

Data Axle (n.d.). U.S. Historical Residences, 2015-2019 [Data set]. Retrieved January 6, 2022 from The Ohio State University Libraries Research Commons. https://library.ohio-state.edu/record=e1002560~S7

Need help?

Please contact the Research Commons (researchcommons@osu.edu) if you have questions about accessing, extracting, or using this data. We are also happy to request additional documentation from the vendor.

Terms of Use:

I. Authorized users include all current Ohio State faculty, staff, and students.

II. Licensed for Ohio State academic use only; any commercial use is prohibited.

III. Users are permitted to extract (download), temporarily store, and manipulate the licensed data for academic uses.

IV. Users may publish limited excerpts of the data in scholarly products created in the course of academic research; however, the data shall not be published in raw form.

V. Users must properly cite Data Axle as the source of the data and provide attribution in any scholarly products which utilized the data.

VI. Users may share limited excerpts of the data with academic research project collaborators, provided such receiving collaborators solely use the data for the purpose of the research project for which the data was shared. Except for this specific case, database content may not be distributed to any non-Ohio State users.