mpcblog 
An enormous amount of information about the characteristics and activities of ordinary people is just waiting to make its debut for researchers to analyze — two billion people and their households, spanning over 100 countries, from 1703 to the present day. All these data will be available for computer analysis by the general public, for free, by 2018.
As of May 2016, IPUMS-DHS includes over 2000 integrated variables from 90 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in 21 countries, and allows researchers to select women, children, or births as their unit of analysis.
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 first in a three-part series, featuring oral histories from John Adams, Todd Gardner, Dianne Star, and Dan Kallgren which offer a glimpse of the MPC before it was the MPC.
The Minnesota Population Center (MPC) is excited to announce the winners of its annual IPUMS Research Awards. The awards honor the best published research and best self-nominated graduate student papers of 2015 that used MPC data to advance or deepen our understanding of social and demographic processes.
Where are all the prostitutes in the census records of London 1881? In her book, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women Class and the State , Judith Walkowitz says that a 19th century city like London (where prostitution was legal) had one prostitute per 36 inhabitants. Based on the 1881 London population records, that amounts to about 24,000 prostitutes. The coded occupations in 1881 London data, however, show no signs of prostitutes anywhere.
Family-member characteristics are often related to individual outcomes. The IPUMS data extract system makes it easy for you to include in your datasets variables that describe other household members, such as age of mother, occupation of father, or educational attainment of spouse.
In April, MPC Director of Data Integration Matt Sobek was invited to speak at an event for the United Nations’ 49th Session of the Commission on Population and Development. The special session, “The Data Revolution in Action: National and International Experiences with Microdata Dissemination and Public Use,” was created to show attendees examples of national and international organizations distributing data for public use.