Steven Ruggles Ragui A. Assaad Deborah Levison Robert E. McCaa Anne Meier University of Minnesota
The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) project is creating fundamental infrastructure for scientific research, education, and policy-making. The collaborators have created the world's largest population database, with information describing 545 million persons drawn from 238 censuses and surveys of 74 countries between 1960 and 2011. This proposal continues funding to build, enrich, and freely disseminate a microdata resource of unprecedented scale and scope. This next project phase expands the coverage of the database, preserves it for future generations, and disseminates the data to users around the world. This project focuses on five major activities: (1) Data acquisition and long-run preservation; (2) Data cleaning and processing; (3) Creating comprehensive documentation to guide users on the meaning of census and survey responses and their comparability across time and space; (4) Improving the web-based dissemination and analysis system and conducting an expanded program of education and dissemination activities; and 5) Developing with national statistical agencies a secure dissemination system for data that pose disclosure risks, making a vast new trove of big data available.
IPUMS is critical scientific infrastructure. The extraordinary growth and redistribution of population and economic resources are reshaping the planet. To meet the challenges created by rapid demographic, economic, and environmental change, researchers must have full and open access to the best possible information. Richly detailed population data spanning the globe over multiple decades are indispensable for creating the next generation of social science and environmental models. IPUMS data have already stimulated new research that transcends national boundaries and static interpretation. The expansion, improvement, and support of the database are directly relevant to the central mission of the NSF to promote the progress of science. The next project phase will leverage the NSF's previous investments and make IPUMS an even more powerful resource for understanding the causes and consequences of the sweeping transformations of the human population. This infrastructure will multiply the quality, quantity, accessibility, and interoperability of information about the changing population, creating a transnational resource of unprecedented power for understanding human society on a global scale. By disseminating big microdata, this project will enhance scientific understanding of critical policy-related issues such as population aging, international migration, climate change, and the effects of government programs on economic development and well-being. The project will promote teaching through: (1) online data analysis and sharing of curricular materials for teaching; (2) conducting training workshops and developing online instructional modules on data usage; and (3) employing a diverse group of graduate and undergraduate research assistants, including members of underrepresented groups, who will develop valuable new skills in a stimulating interdisciplinary en
