IPUMS International Workshop: Promoting Understanding of Statistics about Society with free online data from international censuses

The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-International (IPUMS International) is a data infrastructure project which disseminates high-precision census microdata samples to researchers worldwide free of cost. The samples in IPUMS are drawn from the very data source used to create official statistics by each country for policy and planning purposes. In partnership with most of the world’s national statistical agencies, as well as data archives, research centers, and international organizations, IPUMS International has assembled the most comprehensive collection of census microdata in the world (Figure 1). The microdata records describe more than one-half billion persons nested within families and households, spanning five continents and more than 80 percent of the world's population (Appendix A). IPUMS-International lowers barriers to cross-national and cross-temporal research and teaching by converting international census microdata to a uniform format, providing comprehensive documentation, and making custom downloadable data files available through a user-friendly Web-based access system.