Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) is the world's largest individual-level population database. IPUMS consists of
microdata samples from
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
''(IPUMS-USA)'' and international ''(IPUMS-International)''
census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses inc ...
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.
IPUMS is housed at the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation (ISRDI), an interdisciplinary research center at the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
, under the direction of Professor
Steven Ruggles
Steven Ruggles (born May 8, 1955) is Regents Professor of History and Population Studies at the University of Minnesota, and the director of the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation. He is best known as the creator of IPUMS, the wor ...
.
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
The American Community Survey (ACS) is a demographics survey program conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. It regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the decennial census, such as ancestry, citizenship, educat ...
since 2000 and the
Current Population Survey
The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of about 60,000 U.S. households conducted by the United States Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS uses the data to publish reports early each month called the E ...
since 1962. IPUMS includes household-level data for United States Censuses from
1790
Events
January–March
* January 8 – United States President George Washington gives the first State of the Union address, in New York City.
* January 11 – The 11 minor states of the Austrian Netherlands, which took p ...
to
1840
Events
January–March
* January 3 – One of the predecessor papers of the ''Herald Sun'' of Melbourne, Australia, ''The Port Phillip Herald'', is founded.
* January 10 – Uniform Penny Post is introduced in the United Kingdom.
* Jan ...
, due to the first six censuses only including the name of the head of household, with tallied household totals following. IPUMS provides consistent variable names, coding schemes, and documentation across all the samples, facilitating the analysis of long-term change.
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. 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.
Additional databases in the IPUMS family include the:
*
North Atlantic Population Project
The North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP) is a collaboration of historical demographers in Britain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden to produce a massive census microdata collection for the North Atlantic Region in the ...
(NAPP)
* IPUMS
National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS)
* IPUMS Health Surveys
* IPUMS Global Health
* IPUMS Time Use
The ''Journal of American History'' described the effort as "One of the great archival projects of the past two decades." 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
ind-blowing”
The official motto of IPUMS is "use it for good, never for evil."
All IPUMS data and documentation are available online free of charge.
References
External links
* {{Official website, https://www.ipums.org/
Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation
Databases
Demographics
University of Minnesota