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.
Data Projects
New IPUMS CPS Variable Links Records Across Data Files
IPUMS CPS has added a new variable to unlock longitudinal information in CPS data called CPSIDP. The identifier, the result of a major initiative from the Minnesota Population Center, uniquely identifies individuals who are in the CPS and is assigned to the individual in each of the (up to) eight times over sixteen months that the individual is in the survey.
Learning from Data: From Systemization to Investigation
Benjamin Hartman is a 2016 Summer Diversity Fellow at the MPC. As part of his fellowship, he learned how to take unprocessed data to produce harmonized IPUMS-I data and documentation, make GIS maps, and conduct his own case study investigating the spatial dimensions of internal migration using the Cambodian census. Hartman worked with his colleagues in IPUMS International to create this blog post.
New Feature: Terra Populus Launches TerraScope

TerraPop recently launched TerraScope, a map-based portal for exploring the data in the TerraPop collection. The TerraPop collection includes census data from over 160 countries around the world, as well as environmental data describing land cover, land use, and climate. With such a broad range of data available, selecting a study area for which data are available to study a particular question or, conversely, determining the types of research questions that can be studied within an area of interest can be challenging.
Data For All: IPUMS-DHS Launches Training Workshops in Africa

If you are a student, faculty member, or researcher in the United States, you can learn about IPUMS data through an exhibit or workshop at professional conferences held on multiple occasions each year. Thousands of U.S. demographers, geographers, sociologists, economists, ecologists, health researchers, and others have learned about IPUMS through these events. But what if you are student, teacher, or researcher in Africa, where resources are far less plentiful?
When Migration is Out of Reach: New MPC Research on International Climate Migration

Migration is a valuable adaptation strategy under certain conditions, but when the world’s poorest regions experience crop failures from drought or other climate events, international migration decreases. Why do climate events lead to increased migration in some places, but decreased migration in others?
Conference Recap: Time Use Across the Life Course

Over 100 students, faculty, and researchers gathered June 27 and 28, 2016 at the University of Maryland, College Park, for a conference on Time Use Across the Life Course, funded by the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland and organized by Liana Sayer. Conference attendees came from the United States, Australia, Singapore, England, and Belgium.