IPUMS is excited to announce the winners of its annual IPUMS Research Awards. These awards honor both published research and nominated graduate student papers from 2025 that use IPUMS data to advance or deepen our understanding of social and demographic processes.
The 2025 competition awarded prizes for both published and 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 656 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 U.S. Census summary tables and GIS data from 1790 to the present; IHGIS provides summary tables and GIS data from population, housing, and agricultural censuses 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, from around the world from the 1980s to the present.
- 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 the diversity of scholars doing outstanding science using IPUMS data, with an emphasis on highlighting research from authors who belong to groups that are underrepresented in social science and population health research.
Over 2,200 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 2025 honorees.
IPUMS USA Research Award Winners:
Published Research:
H. Jacob Carlson, John R. Logan, & Jongho Won
The Changing Spatial Pattern of Metropolitan Racial Segregation, 1900–2020: The Rise of Macro-Segregation.
Carlson, Logan, and Won construct a remarkable series of consistent small-area data for the United States, based on IPUMS full-count data for the census of 1900 through 1950, restricted full-count microdata for the 1960 and 1970 censuses, and IPUMS NHGIS data for the 1980 through 2020 censuses. They apply these data to develop measures of black-white residential segregation spanning 120 years. They document that overall segregation peaked in 1960 and has generally declined since then. Neighborhood-level segregation has decreased dramatically over the past six decades, but segregation between communities remains high, and in particular segregation between suburban places continues to rise.
Student Research:
Laura Caron
The Short-and Long-Term Impacts of Expanding Public Education for Disabled Students.
Laura Caron uses IPUMS census, IPUMS American Community Survey, and the timing of state mandates requiring public education for disabled students (1949-1980) to demonstrate widespread benefits of the new policies. Mandates increased schooling, employment, and independent living among disabled individuals, and, as education and employment also increased for non-disabled individuals, generated government revenues above program costs.
IPUMS CPS Research Award Winners:
Published Research:
Megan R. Winkler, Rachel Clohan, Kelli A. Komro, Melvin D. Livingston, & Sara Markowitz
State Earned Income Tax Credit and Food Security: Results Among Economically At-Risk Households With Children.
Using two decades of Current Population Survey (CPS) data, this study leverages state-level variation in state Earned Income Tax Credit access and generosity to evaluate the tax policy effectiveness on food insecurity for over 150,000 at-risk families. This novel use of the CPS shows at-risk families living in states with the most generous tax credits experienced significant reductions in food insecurity.
Student Research:
Gabrielle Juteau, Susan L. Brown, Wendy D. Manning, & Krista K. Westrick-Payne
Measuring Family Boundary Ambiguity in Cohabiting Stepfamilies.
This study uses the Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine whether cohabiting partners are recognized as a child’s “parent” and finds variability by whether the biological parent or the cohabiting partner is the CPS respondent. They show that most parents and partners in cohabiting stepfamilies exclude the partner from this role, which underscores the fuzziness of family membership and points to current limitations of federal data for stepfamily measurement.
IPUMS International Research Award Winners:
Published Research:
Wenxiu Du, Dorothee Beckendorff, & Mathias Lerch
The Impact of Migration on Age Structure Conducive to Human Development Across the Urban Hierarchy.
IPUMS International awards this paper by Du et al. for its comprehensive and policy-relevant analysis. By disaggregating migration effects by urbanization levels and age groups, it provides clear insights into demographic change with development implications. Reviewers praised its nuanced treatment of urban categorization, careful use of IPUMS data, innovative decomposition methods, and ability to present complex patterns in an accessible way without relying on abstract indices. The paper’s strong policy framing, which discusses the age-based dependency implications of migration age patterns, further highlights the value of shared statistical data in informing real-world decisions.
Student Research (tie):
Hampton Gaddy, Rebecca Sear, & Laura Fortunato
High Rates of Polygyny Do Not Lock Large Proportions of Men Out of the Marriage Market.
IPUMS International recognizes this paper by Gaddy et al. for its clear, empirically grounded contribution which challenges long-standing assumptions about polygyny. Drawing on extensive IPUMS International microdata across multiple world regions and historical U.S. contexts, the study offers a fresh and counterintuitive perspective on marriage markets. The authors present complex demographic patterns in an accessible and compelling way, emphasizing interpretation over technical complexity. By carefully addressing a sensitive topic with analytical rigor, the paper demonstrates both the value of comparative microdata and the potential to advance knowledge in meaningful and widely relevant ways with a sensitive topic.
Mathilde Col
Unveiling the Global Determinants and Effects of Bilingual Education Policies in Africa.
IPUMS International recognizes this paper by Col for its innovative and policy-relevant analysis of bilingual education reforms across Sub-Saharan Africa. The author constructs a unique, hand-coded dataset of post-independence educational language instruction policies, describing when and where local educational institutions implemented instruction in local, rather than colonial, languages. The paper combines the rich self-constructed data with census and survey data to examine both the determinants and feasibility of reform. Through rigorous methods and extensive testing, the study offers valuable insights into how political and institutional contexts shape education policy and educational outcomes. The paper effectively integrates multiple data sources with IPUMS data to address an understudied and important topic with clear real-world implications.
IPUMS Health Surveys Research Award Winners:
Published Research (tie):
Jen’nan G. Read & Fatima G. Fairfax
Hidden Heterogeneity: How the White Racial Category Masks Interethnic Health Inequality.
Non-Hispanic whites are commonly used as the reference category in research into U.S. health disparities. Using data on people age 30+ from IPUMS NHIS from 2000-2018, Read and Fairfax document how immigration trends since 1960 have changed the composition and increased the health heterogeneity of this group. White immigrants from the Former Soviet Union fare worse in self-rated health and hypertension, and Middle Eastern immigrants also have worse health than native-born whites. This article builds a strong case against treating non-Hispanic whites as an undifferentiated group when studying racial inequality.
Hui Zheng & Wei-hsin Yu
Paradox Between Immigrant Advantages in Morbidity and Mortality: Dynamic Patterns and Tentative Explanations.
Using IPUMS NHIS data for 2002-2018 linked to mortality data, the authors investigate a paradox: immigrants experience more chronic conditions and disabilities than natives at older ages but exhibit lower overall mortality. By focusing on specific chronic conditions, they carefully evaluate possible explanations. They conclude that health-based selection of immigrants leads to immigrants’ delayed onset of disability and greater ability to survive serious illness.
Student Research:
Christine L. Kuryla, Julie Song, Kamaryn T. Tanner, Alan A. Cohen, Sen Pei, & the Columbia Science of Health Working Group.
The Age Gradient in Self-Rated Health is Flattening: Evidence from Six Nationally Representative US Surveys. (forthcoming)
This ambitious paper analyzes six nationally representative U.S. surveys, including IPUMS NHIS and IPUMS MEPS, to demonstrate that younger adults report increasingly poor health, particularly in terms of mental health, while older adults’ self-rated health has improved. The authors confirm the validity of the self-rated health measure by showing consistent associations between this measure and comorbidities and disabilities by age over time. The paper is important in documenting “a striking transformation in how health is distributed across the American population.”
IPUMS Spatial Research Award Winners:
Published Research:
Itzchak Tzachi Raz
Soil Heterogeneity, Social Learning, and the Formation of Close-Knit Communities.
Itzchak Tzachi Raz uses county-level indicators of social cohesion constructed from IPUMS full count data and NHGIS to assess the relationship between soil heterogeneity and how close-knit communities are between 1850 and 1940. They find that soil heterogeneity and community cohesion have a negative relationship. They suggest that farmers working more homogeneous soils are better able to learn from each other, leading to more closely knit communities. Raz makes creative use of multiple IPUMS datasets, including agricultural censuses and religious bodies data from NHGIS, and links them to the Digital General Soil Map for their analysis.
Student Research (tie):
Gabriel Agostini, Rachel Young, Maria Fitzpatrick, Nikhil Garg, & Emma Pierson
Inferring Fine-Grained Migration Patterns Across the United States.
The authors address the lack of publicly available fine-grained migration data in the United States by developing MIGRATE, a dataset of annual migration flows between census block group pairs across the United States from 2010–2019. MIGRATE was created from proprietary address history data, which is often over-representative of higher-income and majority-group populations. The authors use IPUMS NHGIS sub-county demographic data along with other Census Bureau data products to constrain and de-bias the migration flow estimates. The result is a validated, publicly available resource that reveals migration patterns like racial disparities in upward mobility and wildfire-driven displacement that are invisible at the county level.
Aaron Berman Fernandez
Housing Supply and Racial Integration: Evidence from Building Permits in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.
Using IPUMS NHGIS census block demographic data from 1990-2020 and block-to-block geographic crosswalks, Fernandez examines the relationship between building permitting and racial residential segregation from 1990-2020 for US metropolitan areas and cities within those metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas and cities within them that increased residential building permits had larger decreases in Black-White segregation during the time period. Fernandez concludes that housing policy is an important social process that shapes residential patterns in the US.
IPUMS Global Health Research Award Winners:
Published Research:
Ismael G. Muñoz Gonzales, Guillermo Gómez Moreno, Clara Bueno López, Néstor Aldea Ramos, Michael Borchgrevink Lund, & Alberto Palloni
Grandparental Co-residence, Grandchildren’s Nutrition, and the Role of Demographic and Health Regimes.
Using IPUMS DHS data from 29 African countries and multilevel regression analysis, the authors explain cross-country variation in whether co-residence with grandparents reduces child stunting. Net flows of support to grandchildren diminish with demographic and epidemiological transitions, especially with increases in chronic illness and age-related disability. The paper demonstrates the explanatory power of simultaneously using micro-data on individuals and macro-data on population-level demographic and health regimes.
Student Research:
Kathryn McMahon, Kathy Baylis, Stuart Sweeney, & Chris Funk
Does Humidity Matter? Prenatal Heat and Child Health in South Asia.
This paper makes both methodological and substantive contributions to our understanding of how extreme weather events affect child health. The authors demonstrate that hot-humid exposures have greater negative impact on health than does heat alone. Substantively, they measure the effect of prenatal hot-humid exposures on stunting in children under 5, with likely lasting consequences across the life course, and they forecast increases in stunting in South Asia by over 3 million children by 2050 under current climate change trends. Their use of multiple models, including comparing coresident siblings and choosing alternative heat thresholds, confirms the robustness of their findings.
IPUMS Time Use Research Award Winners:
Published Research:
Pilar Gonalons-Pons & Zohra Ansari-Thomas
The Social Division of Care Work Time Over Half a Century.
This study introduces a novel demographic framework to examine how large-scale demographic, social, and economic changes from 1965 to 2018 impacted the social division of care work time across both paid and unpaid sectors. Using data from the American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS) and the Current Population Survey (CPS), the authors show an increase in total care work time driven largely by increase in unpaid childcare time. However, the racial and gender gap in total care work narrowed significantly as men increased unpaid childcare and non-White women shifted away from traditional paid care roles.
Student Research:
Elena Maria Pojman
Racial-Ethnic Stratification in Women’s Kin Caregiving Burden Across the Life Course in the United States. (forthcoming)
This study integrates kinship models with American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data to illustrate racial and ethnic differences in kinship structure and the life course timing of caregiving responsibilities for parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren. Results show that Hispanic women face a higher caregiving intensity than Black and white women at nearly every age, identifying these disparate time demands as a possible driver of long-term variability in health and socioeconomic outcomes.
IPUMS Excellence In Research Awards Winners:
Published Research:
Jessie Himmelstern & Tom VanHeuvelen
Trends in Realized Job Insecurity Rate and Depth in the United States from 1978 to 2022.
In their paper “Trends in realized job insecurity rate and depth in the United States from 1978 to 2022,” Jessie Himmelstern and Tom VanHeuvelen present broad findings on economic insecurity over more than four decades. The authors leverage the panel component of the Current Population Survey to link individuals over time, observe changes in employment status, and construct two related measures of job insecurity at the individual level. They document trends in the rate and frequency of changes in employment status by gender, and decompose the trends into portions driven by factors including changes in the age and education composition of the labor force. This research contributes key context and nuanced discussion of a highly-studied topic in economics and sociology—job insecurity—that had not yet been sufficiently reviewed over a longer time period.
Student Research:
René Livas & Matthew Jacob
Local Taxes and Suburbanization: Evidence from Philadelphia’s Wage Tax.
In “Local Taxes and Suburbanization: Evidence from Philadelphia’s Wage Tax” authors Matthew Jacob and René Livas show that increases in the wage tax led to more people working outside of the city limits. Conversely, commuting to the city increased when the wage tax fell. While the tax contributed to city revenues, it has also partially eroded the city’s tax base. The authors use 1960-1980 census tract place of work tabulations from IPUMS NHGIS to construct a measure of commuting flows as well as 1940 full count census microdata from IPUMS USA to test baseline differences across enumeration districts. The paper does the meticulous work required for a consistent historical spatial analysis and contributes to a fuller understanding of the drivers of suburbanization in the US.
Congratulations to all our winners, and thank you to everyone who submitted their work. Next year’s awards will open this upcoming winter.
*Because IPUMS is based in the United States, we often include persons who identify as Black/African American, Indigenous, Hispanic/Latino/a/x, Asian American, first-generation college graduates or students, LGBTQ persons, or persons with disabilities in our definition of systemically excluded groups. We recognize for scholars outside of the U.S., in particular, this list may not capture discrimination in their social contexts, and encourage submissions from persons who identify with a group that has been systemically excluded even if it is not explicitly listed here. Award selection decisions will be made without consideration of authors’ race, gender, or other protected identity as required by law.