Philippine Standard Geographic Code • psgc

psgc provides access to the Philippine Standard Geographic Code (PSGC) — the official classification system for geographic areas in the Philippines published by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). It bundles 12 releases (Q1 2023 – Q1 2026) and exposes them through a small, consistent set of functions.

Installation

# Install from CRAN
install.packages("psgc")

# Or install the development version from GitHub
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("yng-me/psgc")

Overview

Function	What it does
`list_releases()`	List all bundled PSA releases
`latest_release()`	Name of the most recent release
`get_psgc()`	Full PSGC table, with optional level filter and population
`psgc_info()`	Metadata for one or more PSGC codes
`get_population()`	Census population figures (long or wide)
`map_psgc()`	Trace codes forward across releases

Every function defaults to the latest release. Pass a release argument to work with older data.

Usage

Browse the full list

library(psgc)

# All geographic areas in the latest release
ph <- get_psgc()
nrow(ph)
#> [1] 42046

head(ph)
#>    psgc_code                     area_name geographic_level
#> 1 0100000000       Region I - Ilocos Region              Reg
#> 2 0102800000               Ilocos Norte              Prov
#> ...

Filter by geographic level

Plain English aliases are accepted — no need to memorise codes:

get_psgc(geographic_level = "Region")
get_psgc(geographic_level = "Province")
get_psgc(geographic_level = "Barangay")

# Cities and municipalities together
get_psgc(geographic_level = "city_mun")

# Multiple levels at once
get_psgc(geographic_level = c("City", "Municipality"))

Look up a specific code

psgc_info("0100000000")           # Region I
psgc_info(c("0100000000", "0102800000"))  # batch lookup

# Short codes are accepted — trailing zeros are added automatically
psgc_info("01")      # → "0100000000" (Region I)
psgc_info("01028")   # → "0102800000" (Ilocos Norte)

Population data

# Long format (default)
get_population(geographic_level = "Region", details = TRUE)
#>    psgc_code                   area_name geographic_level  year population
#> 1 0100000000 Region I - Ilocos Region              Reg  2015    5026128
#> ...

# Wide format — one row per area, one column per census year
get_population(geographic_level = "Region", details = TRUE, wide = TRUE)
#>    psgc_code                   area_name geographic_level population_2015 population_2020 population_2024
#> 1 0100000000 Region I - Ilocos Region              Reg         5026128         5301139         5696141
#> ...

Attach population to the PSGC table

regions <- get_psgc(
  geographic_level        = "Region",
  include_population_data = TRUE
)

# population_data is a nested list-column — one data frame per row
regions$population_data[[1]]
#>   population  year
#> 1    5026128  2015
#> 2    5301139  2020
#> 3    5696141  2024

Track codes across releases

# What is the current code for this 2023-era code?
map_psgc("0100000000")

# Map to a specific target release
map_psgc("0100000000", to = "Q4_2023")

mapping_type tells you what changed: "direct" (unchanged), "renumbered", "split", "merged", or "abolished" (new code will be NA).

Geographic levels

Code	Aliases accepted	Description
`Reg`	`Region`, `region`, `REG`, …	Region
`Prov`	`Province`, `province`, `PROV`, …	Province
`City`	`City`, `city`, `CITY`	City
`Mun`	`Municipality`, `municipal`, `MUN`, …	Municipality
`SubMun`	`Sub-Municipality`, `SubMun`, `sub_mun`, …	Sub-municipality
`Bgy`	`Barangay`, `Brgy`, `barangay`, `BGY`, …	Barangay
(special)	`city_mun`, `City-Municipality`, …	Cities and Municipalities

Bundled releases

list_releases()
#>  [1] "Q1_2023"    "Q4_2023"    "April_2024" "Q2_2024"    "Q3_2024"
#>  [6] "Q4_2024"    "Q1_2025"    "Q2_2025"    "July_2025"  "Q3_2025"
#> [11] "Q4_2025"    "Q1_2026"

psgc