Current MPC Research

Demography is an inherently interdisciplinary field. Narrowly defined, it consists of measurement and analysis of the three determinants of population: mortality, fertility, and migration. More broadly, however, the field of population studies is concerned with the social and economic characteristics of populations and the consequences of population change. Thus, it includes the quantitative study of life-course transitions, household composition, family and kinship, labor force participation, health, aging, and so on, as they relate to population composition and change. The following are a sample of the research projects in progress:

Black Migration to the West, 1930-2000

National Science Foundation. National Science Foundation. (SES-0317254) Principal Investigators: Stewart Tolnay, Joseph Trent Alexander and Jason Digman.

Data Sharing and Archiving

 

High School Exit Examinations and Labor Market Outcomes Among Young Adults

 

Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS)

 

IPUMS-International

The first IPUMS-International database, released in May 2002, contained harmonized census microdata samples for Colombia, France, Kenya, Mexico, the United States, and Vietnam. In March 2003 we added sample data from China. The current database includes fifty million persons with documentation covering temporal and international comparability issues, and is being disseminated to population researchers via a new web-based data access system.

IPUMS — USA

The IPUMS database is a nationally representative high-precision series of census microdata files spanning the period from 1850 through 2000. It represents a twelve-year effort to create an integrated census database describing the American population from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The IPUMS includes historical samples created at Minnesota for every surviving census from 1850 through 1920. For the period from 1940 through 2000, the IPUMS incorporates samples that were originally prepared by the Census Bureau.

Medicaid Undercount: Real or Perceived Bias in Estimates of Coverage in General Population Surveys

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Principal Investigators: Michael Davern, Steve Ruggles, Kathleen Call, and Lynn Blewett.

National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS)

National Science Foundation, Social Science Infrastructure Program (BCS-0094908). Co-Principal Investigators: John Adams, William Block, Mark Lindberg, Robert McMaster, Steven Ruggles, and Wendy Thomas.

North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP)

National Science Foundation (SES-0111707). Principal Investigators: Steven Ruggles, Lisa Y. Dillon, Chad Gaffield, Jan Oldervoll, Kevin Schurer, Gunnar Thorvaldsen.