Accessing International Census Data Tables in R

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by Tsu Zhu and Tracy Kugler

ipumsr now supports IHGIS!

IPUMS spatial data users now have programmatic access to international census data tables in IHGIS. The recent release of ipumsr 0.9.0 enables users to explore metadata; build, submit, and download extracts; and read IHGIS tables directly in R. Many of the ipumsr functions that had been NHGIS-specific have now been generalized to accommodate both IHGIS and NHGIS. More information on the new functions can be found in the ipumsr changelong.

About IPUMS IHGIS

The International Historical Geographic Information System (IHGIS) provides data tables from population, housing, and agricultural censuses from around the world. The data are derived from tables originally published by national statistical offices. The format and structure of the published tables varies widely between countries and across time, even within the same country. IHGIS extracts the tables and standardizes them into a machine-readable structure along with consistently formatted metadata and corresponding GIS boundary files. As of this writing, the IHGIS collection consists of 40 datasets from population and housing censuses, 14 from agricultural censuses, and an additional 305 datasets tabulated from IPUMS International microdata samples.

Working with ipumsr for IHGIS

The following sections walk through how you would use new ipumsr functionality to explore metadata and submit an extract request for data tables from Ireland censuses from 1966 through 1991. This example highlights changes to ipumsr functions that have been generalized to support both IHGIS and NHGIS. For more details see the Aggregate Data API Requests article on the ipumsr webpage.

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Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Data Again Available to New Users

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By Miriam King

After funding for USAID and the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) was eliminated in February 2025, new researchers could no longer apply online for access to DHS data, and existing DHS users could not gain access to additional countries’ data. This restriction affected would-be users of both the original DHS public use files and the integrated version of DHS data through IPUMS DHS. Fortunately, The DHS Program just announced, “We are now open for new registrations.”

The DHS Program logoAccording to The DHS Program website, a three-year grant from the Gates Foundation is supporting the dhsprogram.com website and data archive, where researchers apply for access and can download the original public use files. Once a researcher is approved for DHS data access, they can log in to the IPUMS DHS website, create a customized dataset with the samples and harmonized variables they need, and download that file for analysis on their computer. Anyone can use the IPUMS DHS website to learn about the data, including documentation about the consistently coded variables and the availability of variables by sample, to plan a research project; they need to log in only if they would like to create and download a customized data file.

The grant funding will also support other useful elements of The DHS Program website: StatCompiler (for summary statistics by sample), the DHS Program API, and the Spatial Data Repository (for maps and shapefiles).

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IPUMS MLP: Revolutionizing Linked Data

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By Etienne Breton

As researchers, we often ask questions we cannot answer due to lack of data. More intriguingly, however, there are questions we only think of asking once we encounter data that may answer them. Good data address existing problems; great data inspire new questions. The latest iteration of the IPUMS Multigenerational Longitudinal Panel (MLP) project, which links together records from the full count US census data, fits this description. Visit our data browser and project description for inspiration on research questions you did not know could be asked – and answered.

Full count census data offer unprecedented opportunities for social scientific research. Once harmonized, these data enable precise measurement of key demographic, economic, and social patterns across time and space. Researchers can observe entire populations over long periods and produce estimates virtually free of sampling error. Estimates can also be produced down to the smallest geographical units, allowing researchers to define and observe communities with an outstanding level of detail.

Perhaps even more powerfully, full count data have opened the possibility of automated record linkages across census years to construct millions of individual life histories and trace millions of families over multiple generations. These linked data speak compellingly to core research questions in the social sciences, including intergenerational mobility and the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic characteristics; exhaustive descriptions of individual and family trajectories; internal migration patterns within small geographic units; long-term outcomes of early-life conditions; and many more.

IPUMS disseminates full count census enumerations for ten census years from 1850 to 1950. These data, covering over 800 million individual records, are the fruit of collaboration between IPUMS and the world’s two largest genealogical organizations — Ancestry.com and FamilySearch — to leverage genealogical data for scientific purposes. IPUMS MLP now offers longitudinal links between individuals and households enumerated in those ten censuses. As shown in the figure below, we offer 645 million links between census pairs in MLP’s current iteration. This amounts to more than 175 million people linked over two or more censuses.

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The IPUMS Archive has moved!

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By Diana L. Magnuson; Curator and Historian, ISRDI

Looking in the window of the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation 50 Willey Hall at the IPUMS archives shelves filled with accordion folders and boxesFor a quarter century archival staff and the physical collection of IPUMS archival materials have sojourned in spaces on the West Bank at the University of Minnesota. The People’s Center on Riverside Avenue, the fifth floor of Heller Hall, 50 Willey Hall, 1200 Washington Avenue and the West Bank Office Building on South 2nd Street have all been home to the IPUMS Archive. These moves were embedded in the organizational growth, development, and change experienced by the IPUMS projects from 1999 to the present. Since 2004, IPUMS headquarters have been in 18,500 square feet of renovated space in Willey Hall on the West Bank. The space was a $1.8 million College of Liberal Arts funded remodel of an art gallery and restaurant. Now home to the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, which houses the Minnesota Population Center (MPC), IPUMS, the Life Course Center (LCC), and the Minnesota Research Data Center (MnRDC), the space currently contains six private offices, ninety-one cubicles, lounge spaces, and twelve conference room spaces, including a large ninety seat capacity seminar room.

The IPUMS Archive began in earnest with the launch of IPUMS International (affectionately known as IPUMS-I in some circles), which, as of this writing, includes 104 countries; 656 censuses and surveys, and over 1-billion person records. Beginning in 1999, with a social science infrastructure grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), IPUMS International (IPUMS-I) had the ambitious goal to preserve the world’s microdata resources to democratize global access to these rich resources. In 2025, the project goals continue to be: collecting and preserving census and survey data and documentation; harmonizing these data; and disseminating the harmonized data free of charge.

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Working with Subnational Geographies in IPUMS Global Health

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By Divya Pandey and Anna Bolgrien

In a research project combining data from IPUMS MICS and IPUMS DHS, IPUMS Global Health staff examined trends in the relationship between open defecation and high infant mortality rates (IMR) in the Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains. The project focused on selected bordering regions in Nepal, Bangladesh, and India. By analyzing these environmentally and agro-climatically comparable regions, the study aimed to isolate the impact of national and local policies on open defecation and infant mortality rates.

Figure 1: Regions included in the study

A map of the border and surrounding regions of Nepal, Bangladesh, and India that highlights the sub-national regions included in the study.

The study pooled data from IPUMS MICS and IPUMS DHS to look at trends over almost two decades. IPUMS DHS includes data for all three countries, and IPUMS MICS provides additional years of data for Nepal and Bangladesh. Since the study focused on selected bordering geographies, the authors worked with data from lower administrative levels—divisions in Bangladesh, states in India, and regions in Nepal. Leveraging the geography resources provided by IPUMS, the team used both spatially harmonized and sample-specific geography variables (learn more about IPUMS DHS geography variables and IPUMS MICS geography variables). Spatially harmonized geography variables identify geographic regions using a consistent spatial footprint to allow for the comparison of the same physical space over time. Sample-specific geography variables are not harmonized across time; as their name suggests, they use the geographic boundaries that are sample-specific or contemporaneous to the survey-year in a country.

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What is going on with the weighted counts in the January 2025 CPS?

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By Kari Williams & Sarah Flood

The signature activity of IPUMS is data harmonization, or making variables interoperable across time, to facilitate pooling of multiple months or years of data, as well as comparative and trend analyses. It’s easy to get carried away in the magic of not needing to perform routine data cleaning and having documentation organized at the variable level, and perhaps miss some bigger picture considerations. The Current Population Survey (CPS) annual population controls adjustment is an excellent example.

Each January, the Census Bureau revises the CPS weights to incorporate new population controls, based on the Census Bureau’s updated population estimates. However, the Census Bureau doesn’t re-release previous weights for the CPS based on the new population controls. If you look at trendlines of weighted count estimates using CPS monthly data, you might notice a discontinuity between each December and January – these are the annual population control adjustments at work. In January 2025, the shift is particularly abrupt; this is because the 2024 vintage population estimates (i.e., the population controls for the 2025 CPS) reflect an improvement in the Census Bureau’s methodology for measuring net international migration.

Line chart showing a general upward trend from 2020-2025 with disruptions each January

Figure from Jed Kolko’s Population adjustments will cause the next jobs report to be misinterpreted and misconstrued.

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IPUMS Announces 2024 Research Award Recipients

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IPUMS research awardsIPUMS is excited to announce the winners of its annual IPUMS Research Awards. These awards honor both published research and nominated graduate student papers from 2024 that use IPUMS data to advance or deepen our understanding of social and demographic processes.

The 2024 competition awarded prizes for the best published and best graduate student research in eight categories, each associated with specific IPUMS data collections:

  • IPUMS USA, providing data from the U.S. decennial censuses, the American Community Survey, and includes full count data, from 1850 to the present.
  • IPUMS CPS, providing data from the monthly U.S. labor force survey, the Current Population Survey (CPS), from 1962 to the present.
  • IPUMS International, providing harmonized data contributed by more than 100 international statistical office partners; it currently includes information on over 1 billion people in more than 547 censuses and surveys from around the world, from 1960 forward.
  • IPUMS Health Surveys, which makes available the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS).
  • IPUMS Spatial, covering IPUMS NHGIS, IPUMS IHGIS, and IPUMS CDOH. NHGIS includes GIS boundary files from 1790 to the present; IHGIS provides data tables from population and housing censuses as well as agricultural censuses from around the world; CDOH provides access to measures of disparities, policies, and counts, by state and county, for historically marginalized populations in the US.
  • IPUMS Global Health, providing harmonized data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), and the Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA) data series, for low and middle-income countries.
  • IPUMS Time Use, providing time diary data from the U.S. and around the world from 1930 to the present.
  • IPUMS Excellence in Research, The IPUMS mission of democratizing data is strengthened by broad representation among our data users and the research that we highlight. This award was created to recognize outstanding work using any of the IPUMS data collections by authors who belong to groups that are underrepresented in social science and population health research*.

Over 1,300 publications based on IPUMS data appeared in journals, magazines, and newspapers worldwide last year. From these publications and from nominated graduate student papers, the award committees selected the 2024 honorees.

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