IPUMS NHGIS provides summary data from the U.S. census, American Community Survey (ACS), and other data sources aggregated at various geographic levels. In these summary data, each row or observation in the data represents a specific geographic area (e.g., a specific city or place). Each column in the dataset is a variable that provides information about the geographic area, (e.g., total population under 5 years old).
IPUMS NHGIS time series tables will be particularly useful for you. These tables provide key information about geographic areas across time. To get started using IPUMS NHGIS, click “select data.” Then use the Data Finder to search for tables by geographic level, years, and topic. For geographic level, you’ll want to select place (in Census Bureau data, a city is a type of the geographic area called a place). Here is a short video tutorial on how to use the Data Finder to search for tables. Once you’ve searched for the geographic level, years, and topic you are interested in, click on the “time series tables” tab to find time series tables and add them to your data cart.
Here is a screenshot of my search for time series tables at the place level that include data from 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, or 2020, and the first search result:
The first search result, table AV0. Total Population is a time series table that provides the total population of each place in 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020, and ACS 5-year periods from 2006-2023. You should be able to find most of the information you are looking for in time series tables. You may also want to search for single-year tables (under the “source tables” tab) if you cannot find each topic in a time series table.
Once you have checked out your data cart, you will be able to download your data file and analyze it in a statistical software package such as R, Stata, SPSS, or SAS. We offer a few data training exercises for IPUMS NHGIS in R and Microsoft Excel.
