National Change of Address (NCOA)

United States Postal Service (USPS) Data Axle

Data Axle provides national change of address data as a NCOALink® Full Service Provider Licensee. This information includes all address changes registered with USPS in the United States.

Unit of Observation:
Household
Personally Identifiable Information Available for Linking:
No
Geography:
United States of America
Years Available:
Past 48 Months
Cost:
Paid
Frequency of Updates:
Monthly with an approximately one-month lag (e.g., March 2020 data becomes available in April 2020)
Universe:

All address changes registered with USPS in the United States

Access

USPS licenses its National Change of Address (NCOA) data to Full Service Provider Licensees who make the database available to others. More information about licensing can be found here. The process for acquiring data varies by licensee. This entry describes the process for accessing and using data provided through Data Axle, a full-service provider licensee of NCOALink, who can provide NCOA data to researchers for purchase. Researchers must contact Data Axle’s NCOA contact to request data and negotiate details of the data transfer. Data Axle’s NCOA contact is listed on this page.

If the request is approved, the researcher must pay the price agreed with Data Axle based on the amount of data they require. Processing a data access request typically takes 1-2 days, but may vary depending on the amount of data requested. 

Data Axle also maintains a proprietary NCOA dataset which is not sourced from the USPS. This proprietary dataset includes 15+ years of data and additional demographic information. For more information contact Data Axle’s NCOA contact.

Timeline for Access

The timeline to gain access is typically 1-2 days from requesting the data, but may vary depending on the amount of data requested.

Lag Time

Files are updated monthly, with a one-month lag (e.g., March 2020 data becomes available in April 2020).

Cost

Cost depends on the number of records requested, varying from $0.75 to $2.00 per thousand records. Contact Data Axle for specific pricing.

Linking

Data Axle’s USPS NCOA data does not include demographic information, or any personally identifiable information except for addresses. Data Axle’s proprietary NCOA data contains additional fields which may be useful for linking. Contact Data Axle for details.

Identifiers Available for Linking

  • Address

Data Contents

Partial List of Variables

Past address(es), current address.

J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set

Sanbonmatsu, Lisa, Lawrence F. Katz, Jeffrey B. Liebman, Jeffrey R. Kling. "Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program: Interim Impacts Evaluation." Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2011.

Jacob, Brian A., and Jens Ludwig. 2012. "The Effects of Housing Assistance on Labor Supply: Evidence from a Voucher Lottery." American Economic Review, 102 (1): 272-304.

Guyton, John, Pat Langetieg, Day Manoli, Mark Payne, Brenda Schafer, and Michael Sebastiani. 2017. "Reminders and Recidivism: Using Administrative Data to Characterize Nonfilers and Conduct EITC Outreach." American Economic Review, 107 (5): 471-75.

Last reviewed