Harmonized Decennial Census

The U.S. census counts each resident of the country, where they live on April 1, every ten years ending in zero. Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution mandates the enumeration to determine how to apportion the House of Representatives among the states.

The IPUMS collects, preserves and harmonizes census microdata and provides easy access to this data with enhanced documentation. The public-use IPUMS Data includes decennial censuses from 1790 to 2010 and American Community Surveys (ACS) from 2000 to the present. The internal microdata has been harmonized with the same software used to harmonize the public-use microdata. The harmonized decennial uses the long-form files.

Version 1 of the harmonized internal decennial census microdata files includes a limited set of the most commonly used variables. The current release includes the parent-child and spouse linking variables available in the harmonized public-use microdata files.