Dear IPUMS Team,
I am trying to determine whether it is better to use “geolev2” or “geo2_mx” to locate individuals (in municipalities) in Mexico. Could you please clarify if there is a difference between the two, and if so, which one would be more appropriate to use?
Thank you very much for your assistance.
Pamela
The values for GEOLEV2 and harmonized country-specific variables (e.g., GEO2_MX) should be identical within any given sample. In this specific example, both report harmonized municipio boundaries for Mexico for the full range of sample years; GEOLEV2 is intended to be used for analyses pooling multiple countries or for cross-national comparisons at the second administrative level. If you are only using data for Mexico, it is likely easier to use GEO2_MX (but it is fine to use GEOLEV2).
Note that spatial harmonization over time typically results in the loss of some geographic detail when constructing harmonized units (more information is available in the IPUMS International user guide to geography variables). If you do not need the data to be comparable across time (i.e., you are using a single year of data for Mexico), you may instead prefer to use the single-year municipio identifier (e.g., GEO2_MX2020) to maximize the availability of geographic detail.