IPUMS International: 2023 Highlights & Heading Into 2024

By Jane Lee, IPUMS International

IPUMS International is entering 2024 with a strong head start on partner relations and great energy for continued data engagement with partners and with data users. Thanks to user feedback and productive engagement with existing and prospective national statistical office (NSO) partners, users can expect access to additional census and survey data and new, exciting enhancements in 2024.

2023 was packed fuller than usual with renewed interactions with National Statisticians and statistical offices worldwide. Our attendance at the UN Statistical Commission meetings in February garnered productive conversations with countries, and we were able to move those conversations closer to next steps at the ISI WSC in July, and at the International Conference of Labor Statisticians, in October, which was an opportunity for IPUMS to connect specifically about labor force survey data sharing with NSO representatives from more than 25 countries.

Group of people standing in front of backdrop at the IAOS Conference workshopIPUMS remains committed to regional and conference-based engagement. In May, we hosted a pre-conference workshop in conjunction with IAOS (International Association for Official Statistics) Conference in Livingstone, Zambia.

The 14+ NSO labor force and census experts who attended participated in robust cross-country discussions and shared expertise, tools, and technology related to census. In partnership with UNESCWA, IPUMS International joined NSOs and data users in October at the Regional Workshop on Population Projection and Use of Microdata in Rabat, Morocco. There, IPUMS piloted a new training for statistical offices on the preparation of public-use files for the 40+ attendees.

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Powered by IPUMS at PAA 2023

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.

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IPUMS Announces 2022 Research Award Recipients

IPUMS research awardsWe 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.

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