tidycensus: shift_geo = TRUE

[Liam1]

When running get_acs(), is it possible to set shift_geo = TRUE (or create a similar looking result) if you are not using data from the whole US? I want to include Alaska and Hawaii in a map using get_acs data while only using the data for certain states and not the whole US

Please help!

[StatSteph]

You can subset after getting the data for all states. See example below for the west coast along with HI and AK.

library(tidyverse)
library(tidycensus)

statelist <- c("AK", "HI", "CA", "WA", "OR")

estout <- get_acs(geography = "state",
                  variables="B01001_001",
                  year=2019,
                  survey="acs1",
                  geometry = TRUE,
                  shift_geo = TRUE)
#> Getting data from the 2019 1-year ACS
#> The one-year ACS provides data for geographies with populations of 65,000 and greater.
#> Using feature geometry obtained from the albersusa package
#> Please note: Alaska and Hawaii are being shifted and are not to scale.


fipslist <- fips_codes %>%
  as_tibble() %>%
  select(state, state_code) %>%
  group_by(state, state_code) %>%
  slice(1) %>%
  ungroup() %>%
  filter(state %in% statelist)

fipslist
#> # A tibble: 5 x 2
#>   state state_code
#>   <chr> <chr>     
#> 1 AK    02        
#> 2 CA    06        
#> 3 HI    15        
#> 4 OR    41        
#> 5 WA    53

estsub <- estout %>%
  filter(GEOID %in% c(fipslist$state_code))

estsub %>%
  ggplot(aes(fill=estimate)) +
  geom_sf()

^{Created on 2021-01-07 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)}