Documentation

The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) Complete Count Data include more than 650 million individual-level and 7.5 million household-level records. The microdata are the result of collaboration between IPUMS and the nation’s two largest genealogical organizations—Ancestry.com and FamilySearch—and provides the largest and richest source of individual level and household data.

Historic data are scarce and often only exists in aggregate tables. The key advantage of the IPUMS data is the availability of individual and household level characteristics that researchers can tabulate in ways that benefits their specific research questions. The data contain demographic variables, economic variables, migration variables and family variables. Within households, it is possible to create relational data as all relations between household members are known. For example, having data on the mother and her children in a household enables researchers to calculate the mother’s age at birth. Another advantage of the Complete Count data is the possibility to follow individuals over time using a historical identifier.

In sum: the IPUMS data are a unique source for research on social and economic change and can provide population health researchers with information about social and economic determinants.

The IPUMS 1900 census data was collected in June 1900. Enumerators collected data traveling to households and counting the residents who regularly slept at the household. Individuals lacking permanent housing were counted as residents of the place where they were when the data was collected. Household members absent on the day of data collected were either listed to the household with the help of other household members or were scheduled for the last census subdivision.

Section 2

This dataset was created on 2020-01-10 22:51:40.810 by merging multiple datasets together. The source datasets for this version were:

IPUMS 1900 households: This dataset includes all households from the 1900 US census.

IPUMS 1900 persons: This dataset includes all individuals from the 1910 US census.

IPUMS 1900 Lookup: This dataset includes variable names, variable labels, variable values, and corresponding variable value labels for the IPUMS 1900 datasets.

Section 3

The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) Complete Count Data include more than 650 million individual-level and 7.5 million household-level records. The microdata are the result of collaboration between IPUMS and the nation’s two largest genealogical organizations—Ancestry.com and FamilySearch—and provides the largest and richest source of individual level and household data.

Historic data are scarce and often only exists in aggregate tables. The key advantage of the IPUMS data is the availability of individual and household level characteristics that researchers can tabulate in ways that benefits their specific research questions. The data contain demographic variables, economic variables, migration variables and family variables. Within households, it is possible to create relational data as all relations between household members are known. For example, having data on the mother and her children in a household enables researchers to calculate the mother’s age at birth. Another advantage of the Complete Count data is the possibility to follow individuals over time using a historical identifier.

In sum: the IPUMS data are a unique source for research on social and economic change and can provide population health researchers with information about social and economic determinants.

The IPUMS 1900 census data was collected in June 1900. Enumerators collected data traveling to households and counting the residents who regularly slept at the household. Individuals lacking permanent housing were counted as residents of the place where they were when the data was collected. Household members absent on the day of data collected were either listed to the household with the help of other household members or were scheduled for the last census subdivision.

The data sets in this repository allow users to link people among the U.S. decennial censuses, using the "histid" identifier. The census data sets users will need are indexed by Ancestry.com and are hosted by IPUMS at https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/samples. Users will need to download the full-count census for each year and be sure to select the "histid" variable that is available under the Person/Historical Technical drop-down menu.As of 7/12/21, links are available between the 1900-1910, 1910-1920, and 1900-1920 censuses.A detailed account of how these links are created and a description of the data and its characteristics are available in the following article:Price, J., Buckles, K., Van Leeuwen, J., & Riley, I. (2021). Combining family history and machine learning to link historical records: The Census Tree data set. Explorations in Economic History, 80, 101391.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498321000024

This data collection contains detailed county and state-level ecological and descriptive data for the United States for the years 1790 to 2002. Parts 1-43 are an update to HISTORICAL, DEMOGRAPHIC, ECONOMIC, AND SOCIAL DATA: THE UNITED STATES, 1790-1970 (ICPSR 0003). Parts 1-41 contain data from the 1790-1970 censuses. They include extensive information about the social and political character of the United States, including a breakdown of population by state, race, nationality, number of families, size of the family, births, deaths, marriages, occupation, religion, and general economic condition. Parts 42 and 43 contain data from the 1840 and 1870 Censuses of Manufacturing, respectively. These files include information about the number of persons employed in various industries and the quantities of different types of manufactured products. Parts 44-50 provide county-level data from the United States Census of Agriculture for 1840 to 1900. They also include the state and national totals for the variables. The files provide data about the number, types, and prices of various agricultural products. Parts 51-57 contain data on religious bodies and church membership for 1906, 1916, 1926, 1936, and 1952, respectively. Parts 58-69 consist of data from the CITY DATA BOOKS for 1944, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1983, 1988, 1994, and 2000, respectively. These files contain information about population, climate, housing units, hotels, birth and death rates, school enrollment and education expenditures, employment in various industries, and city government finances. Parts 70-81 consist of data from the COUNTY DATA BOOKS for 1947, 1949, 1952, 1956, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1983, 1988, 1994, and 2000, respectively. These files include information about population, employment, housing, agriculture, manufacturing, retail, services, trade, banking, Social Security, local governments, school enrollment, hospitals, crime, and income. Parts 82-84 contain data from USA COUNTIES 1998. Due to the large number of variables from this source, the data were divided into into three separate data files. Data include information on population, vital statistics, school enrollment, educational attainment, Social Security, labor force, personal income, poverty, housing, trade, farms, ancestry, commercial banks, and transfer payments. Parts 85-106 provide data from the United States Census of Agriculture for 1910 to 2002. They provide data about the amount, types, and prices of various agricultural products. Also, these datasets contain extensive information on the amount, expenses, sales, values, and production of farms and machinery. (Source: downloaded from ICPSR 7/13/10)

Please Note: This dataset is part of the historical CISER Data Archive Collection and is also available at ICPSR -- https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02896.v3. We highly recommend using the ICPSR version, as they made this dataset available in multiple data formats and updated the data through 2002.