mpcblog 
The team at IPUMS-USA is excited to announce the release of the 2015 American Community Survey (ACS) microdata file. IPUMS USA now contains 16 years of yearly ACS microdata for analysis. For researchers, ACS data is the most frequently used IPUMS data.
Bethel University Professor of History Diana L. Magnuson is documenting the growth of the Minnesota Population Center. Believing that preserving institutional memory is vital, the Center is supporting Magnuson’s work to capture oral histories of past and present MPC faculty and staff. This is the fourth installment in a series on the institutional history of the MPC.
Associate Professor of Epidemiology Theresa Osypuk is using new tools and methods to rethink the way inequality relates to health in the U.S. Using data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing demonstration project, Osypuk is revealing that the health gains in families who have relocated away from poverty vary.
“Good IT is invisible,” says MPC IT Core director Fran Fabrizio. “You want the users to have the idea that it’s a magic black box.” Though the intent is for the technology behind IPUMS and the other MPC data tools to seem effortless, Fabrizio understands the extent of the human work goes that goes into producing good technology. Getting 2.6 terabytes of data out to users each week requires no small amount of technology behind it.
Researchers from Cornell University, the University of Minnesota, and the Minnesota Population Center have used IPUMS Time Use data to find that mothers are less happy than fathers with their parenting duties. Mothers report more stress and greater fatigue than fathers. This experience gap is attributed to the differing tasks of each parent. The paper was recently published in the American Sociological Review.
It seems counterintuitive that rising divorce rates, fewer children, and an increase in dual-income families would result in an increase in time couples spend together, and in time parents spend with children, but according to Minnesota Population Center researcher, Katie Genadek, this is exactly what the data are showing. Her goal: to determine why an increase in factors that seem to undermine quality family time could actually result in an increase in the time families spend together.
IPUMS has updated the family interrelationship variables in IPUMS CPS and the Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS) to include same-sex and cohabiting couples. The updated variables dramatically reduce research barriers for those interested in this family and household context.