The IPUMS-Europe Project: Integrating the Region's Census Microdata

Albert Esteve, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Robert McCaa, University of Minnesota
Anna Cabré, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Census microdata are an invaluable resource for social science and policy research. Other sources —such as demographic and labor force surveys— often offer greater subject coverage and detail than do census data, but no alternate source offers comparable sample density, chronological depth, and geographic coverage. This paper describes the IPUMS-Europe project, a consortium lead by the Minnesota Population Center and the Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics to anonymize, harmonize and distribute census microdata of eighteen European countries from the 1960s to the present. The database will contain anonymized microdata samples, encompassing as many as 50 censuses and totaling more than 70 million person records. Custom-tailored extracts will be delivered, at no charge, to bona fide researchers via the Internet. The new database will allow social scientists to make comparisons across European nations during decades of marked demographic change and extraordinary political and economic restructuring.