When reading the newspaper, you may come across articles discussing U.S. housing, the labor market, family structure, the life course, or population change. Chances are good that IPUMS provided the data underlying these stories. Consider the following stories, published in the Washington Post in March 2019.
IPUMS Announces 2018 Research Award Recipients
IPUMS is excited to announce the winners of its annual IPUMS Research Awards. These awards honor the best published research and self-nominated graduate student papers from 2018 that used IPUMS data to advance or deepen our understanding of social and demographic processes.
IPUMS, developed by and housed at the University of Minnesota, is the world’s largest individual-level population database, providing harmonized data on people in the U.S. and around the world to researchers at no cost.
IPUMS Search has a New Look!
You may have noticed that the search tool for all IPUMS microdata projects has a new look.
If not, you might also be the kind of person who doesn’t notice when your significant other gets a major haircut. Really, it’s fine. You are probably so busy admiring our dazzling data that you can barely notice the search tool. Now, however, is the time when we point out that we do have a new search tool, and you can fawn over it while we enthusiastically gush about the new options for basic or advanced search!
New Course using IPUMS PMA and IPUMS DHS Data
Professor Kathryn Grace (geography) is providing a unique opportunity for students to conduct independent research this semester through a brand-new course, “Applied Quantitative Methods Using Survey Data.” In the course, which is open to both graduates and undergraduates, students develop a research question related to global health and, using IPUMS PMA or IPUMS DHS data, learn the steps for answering it.
The New IPUMS Forum
As some of you may have noticed, the IPUMS Forum just had a major reimagining. Maybe it was the cabin fever of a particularly snowy Minnesota February, or maybe it was the faceless stare of our old forum’s default avatar, but something was telling us it was time for a change. And this is a big change. Not only does the forum have a snazzy new look, but it also comes with a new set of features. No more struggling to attach documents and images, no more accidentally submitting a question twice, no more faceless avatar judging you with their perfect side-part and prominent jaw line, and did I mention emojis!?!?! Best of all, this new forum is built with discussion in mind (the company that built the platform is even called Discourse). Where the old forum was a fairly rigid, question/answer framework, this new forum encourages conversation by allowing follow-up replies, relating topics to one another, and did I mention EMOJIS??!!!
Seriously haunting.
IPUMS USA: County Variable Name Changes
“What’s in a name? That which we call a COUNTYFIPS by any other name would still be accurate” ~ Steve Shakespeare (the lesser known, quantitative Shakespeare).
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Though, when you are sharing your variable names with tens of thousands of researchers who really just want their analysis to work you may want to be cautious about changing variable names. This is exactly the reason our (now re-named) COUNTY variable held onto that moniker for so long. And when you do change variable names you better try your hardest to let everyone know, so let’s start with that part.
IPUMS DHS at Work | “Child Stunting: National Figures Conceal Subnational Heterogeneity”
While summary national-level statistics from sources such as the World Bank are a useful tool, these national-level figures may conceal great heterogeneity across subnational units such as provinces and large urban areas. Such differences are displayed in the figures below, with data on the percentage of stunted children under age 5, nationally and by region within countries. For example, while 40 to 50 percent of Tanzanian children overall are stunted, the figures range from under 20 percent to 50 percent or more across Tanzanian regions.