mpcblog – Page 7 – Use It for Good

IPUMS FAQ: Alternative Measures of Unemployment

July 21, 2023 by mpcblog

By Matthew Bombyk

As part of the IPUMS mission to democratize data, our User Support team strives to answer your questions about the data. Over time, some questions are repeated. This blog post is an extension of an earlier series addressing frequently asked questions. Maybe you’ll learn something. Perhaps you’ll just find the information interesting. Regardless, we hope you enjoy it!

Here’s one of those questions:

How can I use IPUMS CPS to calculate the Alternative Measures of Unemployment published by the BLS?

Every month the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes a set of Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization as part of its well-known Employment Situation News Release. A common question we are asked at IPUMS is how to calculate these rates using IPUMS CPS data. The “headline” unemployment figure is known as U-3 and is a straightforward calculation using only the main employment status variable, EMPSTAT. However, the other measures are not quite as simple. Nonetheless, these can be calculated using IPUMS CPS! Using the table below, you can calculate these rates using the public use microdata.

Powered by IPUMS at PAA 2023

June 17, 2025May 18, 2023 by mpcblog

By Stacy Nordstrom

We attend the Population Association of America (PAA) annual meeting every year and we are always inspired by the outstanding research being shared. We love having conversations with users at our booth, at poster sessions, at presentations, or even just in the lobby. This year was a little extra special because we also gathered to celebrate 30 years of IPUMS.

Steve Ruggles gives a speech in a room full of people watching him — IPUMS Director Steve Ruggles shares a few words at the IPUMS 30 Celebration

We also were thrilled to celebrate with Elizabeth Heger Boyle. She was honored with the Harriet B. Presser Award for her record of sustained research contributions to the study of gender and demography. Dr. Boyle pioneered IPUMS Global Health, democratizing access to women and children’s health data and unleashing innovative new streams of cross-national comparative research.

Why Should I Complete the IPUMS User Survey?

June 13, 2025May 2, 2023 by mpcblog

By Kari Williams

If you are an avid IPUMS user who reads every email update, you have probably noticed that we pepper you with requests to complete our annual user survey. Perhaps you have asked yourself, “why bother?” or assumed we don’t really want YOUR feedback–that the survey is meant for a different type of IPUMS data user. We conduct an annual survey of data users for three reasons: 1) we value your input, 2) we want to invest in areas that benefit users, and 3) we reference your feedback when reporting to funders on current work and in applying for support to expand IPUMS. Let me assure you, we want to hear from YOU and we hope you take a few minu tes to complete the survey.

Feedback is an important part of the IPUMS lifecycle. Our mission is to democratize access to the world’s social and economic data; data users are central to the success of this mission. We can learn a lot from registration numbers for each IPUMS data collection, the number and timing of online analysis or custom data extract requests, #poweredbyIPUMS publications, or questions and comments submitted to our User Support team. However, none of these is a substitute for directly asking users what they like most about IPUMS and what we can do better.

IPUMS Announces 2022 Research Award Recipients

June 13, 2025April 17, 2023 by mpcblog

We are excited to announce the winners of our annual IPUMS Research Awards competition. These awards honor outstanding published research and graduate student papers from 2022 that use IPUMS data to advance or deepen our understanding of social and demographic processes.

The 2022 competition awarded prizes for the best published and best graduate student research in eight categories:

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 for over 500 censuses and surveys from around the world for 1960 forward as well as full count historical (NAPP) data.
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 Terra. 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; Terra provides data on population and the environment from 1960 to the present.
IPUMS Global Health, providing harmonized data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the Performance Monitoring and Accountability surveys, for low and middle-income countries from the 1980s to the present.
IPUMS Time Use, providing time diary data from the U.S. and around the world from 1965 to the present.
IPUMS Excellence in Research, this award is an opportunity to highlight and reward outstanding work using any of the IPUMS data collections by authors who are underrepresented in social science research.

The awards committee reviewed hundreds of submissions; from these, we selected the 2022 winners.

IPUMS FAQ: What are Virtual Office Hours?

June 13, 2025March 14, 2023 by mpcblog

by Amy Grotsun and Kari Williams

While scrolling through an IPUMS email or checking up on the latest IPUMS tweets you may have read about IPUMS Virtual Office Hours. You also probably wondered, “What even are virtual office hours?” Today we are here to answer that question.

In the wake of canceled conferences during spring of 2020, IPUMS wanted to create an opportunity to connect with data users about questions they might have when using the data–the kind of thing you might pop by the exhibit hall booth to ask. We found that we connected with virtual conference attendees as expected, but many other IPUMS data users as well. As in-person conferences resume, we will continue to host virtual office hours quarterly so we can continue connecting with a broad range of IPUMS users.

IPUMS FAQs: How do I open IPUMS microdata files in my stats package?

June 13, 2025January 18, 2023 by mpcblog

By Kari Williams

As part of the IPUMS mission to democratize data, our user support team strives to answer your questions about the data. Over time, some questions are repeated. This blog post is an extension of an earlier series addressing frequently asked questions. Maybe you’ll learn something. Perhaps you’ll just find the information interesting. Regardless, we hope you enjoy it!

Here’s one of those questions:

How do I open IPUMS microdata files in my stats package?

You have honed your research question and analytical approach, identified an IPUMS data collection that suits your needs, learned to navigate the IPUMS interface to create a custom data extract, and just received an email notification that your data file is ready to download. You put your favorite song on the stereo and open your data file in Stata (or whatever statistical software package makes your data analysis dreams come true), and…

record scratch! You see a “file not Stata format” error.

Malaria Transmission in Context: Linking Health, Census, and Ecological Data

June 13, 2025January 12, 2023 by mpcblog

by Yara Ghazal, Ilyana Hohenkirk, Tracy Kugler, and Kelly Searle

Malaria, like many vector-borne diseases, impacts health, economic growth, and society. The burden of malaria incidence and death is concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa; in 2020, 95% of all malaria cases and 96% of all deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa (WHO, 2022). Malaria impacts not only population health but also the economic growth of these 32 countries. It is estimated that up to 1.3% of economic growth in this region of Africa is slowed each year due to malaria (CCP-JHU, 2015). Understanding malaria transmission is essential to ending its spread and creating a healthier and more prosperous future for developing nations.

The literature on malaria transmission patterns has shown that several environmental factors impact mosquito and parasite vital rates, and thus affect the transmission intensity, seasonality, and geographical distribution of malaria (Castro, 2017). Temperature and precipitation are the primary climate-based factors that influence malaria transmission patterns. Temperature creates geographical constraints for vector and parasite development. Increasing temperatures have been found to shorten mosquito maturation time and increase feeding frequency. However, areas of extremely high temperatures usually yield smaller, less fecund mosquitoes. In parallel, because mosquitoes often breed in pools formed by rainfall and flooding, the frequency, duration, and intensity of precipitation have a significant influence on mosquito populations.