IPUMS

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Short description: World's largest individual-level population database

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) is the world's largest individual-level population database. IPUMS consists of microdata samples from United States (IPUMS-USA) and international (IPUMS-International) census records, as well as data from U.S. and international surveys. The records are converted into a consistent format and made available to researchers through a web-based data dissemination and analysis system.[1]

IPUMS is housed at the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation (ISRDI), an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Minnesota, under the direction of Professor Steven Ruggles.[2]

Description

IPUMS includes all persons enumerated in the United States Censuses from 1850 to 2020 (though, the 1890 census is missing because it was destroyed in a fire) and from the American Community Survey since 2000 and the Current Population Survey since 1962. IPUMS includes household-level data for United States Censuses from 1790 to 1840, due to the first six censuses only including the name of the head of household, with tallied household totals following.[3] IPUMS provides consistent variable names, coding schemes, and documentation across all the samples, facilitating the analysis of long-term change.[4]

IPUMS-International includes countries from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America for 1960 forward. The database currently includes more than a billion individuals enumerated in 365 censuses from 94 countries around the world.[5] IPUMS-International converts census microdata for multiple countries into a consistent format, allowing for comparisons across countries and time periods. Special efforts are made to simplify use of the data while losing no meaningful information. Comprehensive documentation is provided in a coherent form to facilitate comparative analyses of social and economic change.[6]

Additional databases in the IPUMS family include the:

The Journal of American History described the effort as "One of the great archival projects of the past two decades."[12] Liens Socio, the French portal for the social sciences, gave IPUMS the only “best site” designation that has gone to any non-French website, writing “IPUMS est un projet absolument extraordinaire...époustouflante [mind-blowing]!” [13]

The official motto of IPUMS is "use it for good, never for evil."[14] All IPUMS data and documentation are available online free of charge.

References

  1. "IPUMS". http://ipums.org/. 
  2. Steven Ruggles. "The Minnesota Population Center Data Integration Projects: Challenges of harmonizing census microdata across time and place". 2005 Proceedings of the American Statistical Association. Government Statistics Section, Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association: 1405–1415. http://users.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/JSM2005-000189.pdf. 
  3. "IPUMS USA | U.S. 1790-1840 Complete Count Data". https://usa.ipums.org/usa/1790_1840_intro2.shtml. 
  4. Steven Ruggles (2014). "Big Microdata for Population Research". Demography 51 (1): 287–297. doi:10.1007/s13524-013-0240-2. PMID 24014182. PMC 3949202. http://users.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Articles/Big_Microdata.pdf. 
  5. "IPUMS-I: Sample Information". https://international.ipums.org/international-action/sample_details. 
  6. Steven Ruggles, Robert McCaa, Matthew Sobek, and Lara Cleveland (2015). "The IPUMS Collaboration: Integrating and Disseminating the World's Population Microdata". Journal of Demographic Economics 81 (2): 203–216. doi:10.1017/dem.2014.6. http://users.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Articles/JODE.pdf. 
  7. "North Atlantic Population Project". https://www.nappdata.org/napp/. 
  8. "IPUMS NHGIS" (in en). https://www.nhgis.org/. 
  9. "IPUMS Health Surveys". https://www.ipums.org/healthsurveys.shtml. 
  10. "IPUMS Global Health". https://www.ipums.org/globalhealth.shtml. 
  11. "IPUMS Time Use". https://www.ipums.org/timeuse.shtml. 
  12. Joel Perlmann (2003). "IPUMS". Journal of American History 90: 339–340. doi:10.2307/3659961. 
  13. "Liens Socio". https://www.liens-socio.org/. 
  14. "Ipums USA". https://usa.ipums.org/usa/. 

External links