Data Services Knowledge Base

These data are available from American FactFinder on the Census Bureau's web site for the year 2000.:

http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml

The data you are trying to obtain can be located in Table HCT012. Median household income for California.

California ZIPS

I’ve downloaded all zip codes for the nation (~33,000) and selected several tables you might be interested in:

Median household income
Median household income (black householder)
Median household income (Asian householder)
Median household income (non-Hispanic white householder
Median household income (Hispanic householder

The data are a pipe delimited text file:

44 | 567 | 345 | etc.

You can read it via Excel. Most statistical packages can handle delimiters as well.

In areas where the population of a subgroup is small, the median household income for that subgroup will not be reported. For instance, in the first zip code (00601), the median household income in 2000 was $9,888. The values for the subgroups is: blacks ($7,250), Asians (blank); Hispanics ($9,874), and white, non-Hispanics ($11,250). The data look like this:

. . . |9888|7250||9874|11250

One other thing you’ll notice is that on occasion there are zip codes that end in an HH or an XX. Zip codes are not census geography. The Census Bureau builds these from census tracts and uses the XX and HH coding to indicate uncertainty about the zip code assignment and water respectively. Here’s more about the HH and XX codes:

http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/data/kb/answer.html?i=1062

If you have trouble using this file, let me know. I can shrink it down to your original request (California zip codes 90001 – 96162 and median household income).