Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) is the world's largest individual-level population database. IPUMS consists of

microdata Microdata can mean: * Microdata (statistics), a statistical term for individual response data in surveys and censuses * Microdata (HTML), a specification for semantic markup in HTML * Microdata Corporation Microdata Corporation was an American ...

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 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

''(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 in ...

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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

, under the direction of Professor Steven Ruggles.

Description

IPUMS includes all persons enumerated in the United States Censuses from 1850 to

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in ...

(though, the

1890 census The United States census of 1890 was taken beginning June 2, 1890, but most of the 1890 census materials were destroyed in 1921 when a building caught fire and in the subsequent disposal of the remaining damaged records. It determined the reside ...

is missing because it was destroyed in a fire) and from the American Community Survey 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 Em ...

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, 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 (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