Multigenerational Households Across Multiple Data Collections

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By Etienne Breton

We recently updated a key IPUMS-constructed variable for understanding multigenerational households: MULTGEN, which identifies the number of generations in a household. This variable is needed to answer important questions in our era of rapid population aging. For example, do multigenerational households become more numerous during economic recessions, and if so for whom exactly? Can they buffer against physical and cognitive decline for older adults? Do young people living with their grandparents have distinct educational, professional or even health trajectories? All of these questions – and many more – can be investigated creatively and rigorously using MULTGEN.

MULTGEN has long been available for most IPUMS USA samples. We recently adapted our methodology to add this variable to IPUMS CPS for all samples from January 1994 to the present. This means that users can now research multigenerational households with another IPUMS data collection, tackling key research questions with added precision and contextual richness, in addition to analysis of topics in the CPS that are not covered in the ACS (e.g., tobacco use, volunteering, voting and registration).

The construction of MULTGEN in IPUMS CPS (as in IPUMS USA) relies on IPUMS family interrelationship variables (see this classic paper, or this more recent paper, or our user guide, for how these variables are constructed) and information from the variable RELATE (insufficient information in the RELATE variable before 1994 explains why MULTGEN is not available for older samples). At present, MULTGEN in IPUMS CPS only provides general codes about the number of generations per household, whereas MULTGEN in IPUMS USA also provides detailed codes identifying subtypes of 2-generations and 3+ generations households.

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OCC2010 is now available in ATUS

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By Daniel Backman

You asked, we delivered.

The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) was first fielded in 2003 and data have been collected and released annually since. Over that period, ATUS occupations have been coded using three distinct coding schemes. IPUMS ATUS users have requested that we extend our occupation harmonization work to IPUMS ATUS to bridge changes in occupation coding schemes. The wish of those users has been granted! OCC2010 is now available via IPUMS ATUS. As always, the original, un-recoded occupation categories are also available in OCC.

Why do we need to harmonize occupations?

The Census Bureau regularly updates occupation and industry codes to reflect the rapidly changing nature of employment in the United States. Changes to occupation codes are important because they provide the most up to date information about jobs and the nature of work. Updates to occupation codes reflect the evolution of jobs and work and allow for the incorporation of new occupations. While updating occupation classification schemes improves the quality of occupation data, navigating these changes can be cumbersome for researchers.

What is OCC2010?

OCC2010 is created by IPUMS to implement consistent occupation codes across all years of currently available ATUS data (2003 to 2024). This harmonized occupation variable assigns all original occupation codes in the ATUS (i.e., OCC) to a single Census Bureau coding scheme. We chose the 2010 occupation coding scheme (well, actually the 2012 coding scheme which is very similar to the 2010 scheme1) because then we only have to bridge one change in occupation codes forward in time and backwards in time. OCC2010 was developed to enhance the comparability of occupational data by providing a consistent set of occupational codes for IPUMS ATUS from 2003 forward. OCC2010 is also available in IPUMS CPS and IPUMS USA.

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New variables for augmenting IPUMS CPS data with external city-level data

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By David Van Riper, Etienne Breton, and Sarah Flood

Have you ever wanted to link external city-level data to CPS respondents but were stymied by the city coding system used by the CPS? With the release of two new variables (PLACECENSUS and PLACEFIPS), IPUMS CPS has simplified the task of making such linkages.

The CPS identifies a limited number of sub-state geographic units (e.g., cities, counties) because of the complex assignment of CPS geographic identifiers (see working paper) and required minimum population thresholds. An additional layer of complexity is a custom coding scheme for central/principal cities (INDIVIDCC) that is unique to the CPS and, therefore, unfamiliar to most data users. IPUMS CPS has addressed this issue through the creation of two new variables – PLACECENSUS and PLACEFIPS – which provide standard codes for identifying central cities. These new variables will dramatically simplify the process of using IPUMS CPS to study specific cities, and will be particularly beneficial to those who want to augment the CPS data with city-level characteristics.

While metropolitan areas have almost always been identified in CPS (see METFIPS), central or principal cities – defined as the largest or one of the largest cities in metropolitan areas – were not identified in the data until October of 1985 (see INDIVIDCC). The identification of cities is great for users – they can focus their analyses on these cities (paying close attention to sample size and applying weights of course!). If analyses are confined to the CPS only, INDIVIDCC is adequate for use. However, attaching city-level characteristics to CPS data quickly becomes a problem given the native coding scheme for INDIVIDCC that is not used in other data products.

The new IPUMS CPS variables PLACECENSUS and PLACEFIPS help mitigate the challenge associated with augmenting city-level data from other sources with CPS data.

  • PLACECENSUS (available October 1985 to May 1995) uses Census city codes developed by the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau developed standard Census codes for cities that they applied to the 1970 and 1980 decennial censuses. The codes are assigned to each place in alphabetical order within a state.
  • PLACEFIPS (available September 1995 forward) uses FIPS codes. were developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the 1980s and have been used by the Census Bureau for decennial censuses since 1990 and in many other datasets published by the United States government (e.g., American Community Survey). FIPS codes are assigned to each place in alphabetical order within a state.
  • Neither PLACECENSUS nor PLACEFIPS are available for the June to August 1995 data. During this period, there are no sub-state geographic identifiers in the data.
  • PLACECENSUS and PLACEFIPS codes are unique within states, so users must combine the PLACECENSUS or PLACEFIPS codes with a state identifier (STATEFIP or STATECENSUS) to uniquely identify each central city.

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Measuring Food Security with U.S. Federal Data

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By Kari Williams & Isabel Pastoor

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines a household as being food secure when all household members at all times have access to “enough food for an active, healthy life;” it sets a minimum threshold for food security of “ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods” and the “assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways” (USDA Economic Research Service, 2025). The USDA provides survey modules for assessing food security in the U.S. (see Table 1), which are used in a number of federal surveys.

Following the recent announcement by the USDA that they plan to cease data collection for the Food Security supplement fielded as part of the December Current Population Survey, we are highlighting data sources for studying food security in the U.S. Table 2 provides an overview of a number of federal data sources that can be used to study aspects of food security in the U.S. This list of data sources is not exhaustive; we have prioritized data available through IPUMS and other long-running and large-scale population surveys. Additional sources covering shorter time periods or more specific focal populations can be found from the USDA’s Food Security in the United States Documentation page and the Food Access Research Atlas.

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U.S. Federal Data from IPUMS during the Shutdown

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By Sarah Flood & Kari Williams

If you eagerly await new data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) or the American Community Survey (ACS) this time of year, you might be wondering how the current U.S. federal government shutdown affects release timelines for these data. We’re wondering, too! While we don’t know when these data will be released, we can share what we know and what you can expect from IPUMS.

Delays to the release of new federal data

What we know: Any delays to the processing and release of new federal data also delays our work and the release of these data via IPUMS. We expect delays for at least some federal data releases (see this dataindex.us post for a helpful overview of federal data collection and release during a government shutdown). For example, we typically expect that the September Basic Monthly data from the CPS would be available for download from the Census Bureau website as of yesterday, October 8. However, the Census Bureau’s shutdown plans specify that monthly economic indicators will not be available during the shutdown; therefore IPUMS CPS cannot process the data until they are released.

What you can expect from us: For the foreseeable future, you can expect to see a banner on the IPUMS data collection homepages for US data sources communicating what we know about data release timelines. We will note when we are still awaiting the release of data from the original U.S. federal agency data providers, once the original data have been released and are being processed by IPUMS, and when the new data have been integrated into IPUMS.

IPUMS data will continue to be available

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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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