Download NCHS Natality (Live Births) Data from the CDC FTP (ASCII)

Fair warning: These files are very large when uncompressed. They range between 3 and 5 GB uncompressed with a compression ratio of around 90 Also, it appears the CDC rate limits downloads so I do not export this function. To use it, you'll need to use the triple colon: `narcan:::download_natality_ascii()`.

Usage

download_natality_ascii(year, download_dir = "./raw_data", return_path = FALSE)

Source

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data_access/vitalstatsonline.htm

Arguments

year

year to download (as integer)

download_dir

file path to save downloaded data

return_path

return the path of the file that was downloaded

Value

none

Details

Further, the unzip() function in R will not unzip files that are larger than 4GB so this needs to be unzipped using a system call or external program.