Following data extraction and loading in R, I keep getting a dataset with observations but zero variables

CPS
1

In IPUMS CPS, for my variables I’m choosing: HOURWAGE, AGE, RACE, EARNWT, MARST, STATEFIP (Once I troubleshoot this, I will eventually choose more variables). I’m choosing 2020 for my sample. When creating my extract, my data structure is rectangular with CSV format. When loading my extract into R, I use this code:
ddi ← read_ipums_ddi(“cps_00035.xml”)
data ← read_ipums_micro(ddi)

After doing this however, I keep ending up with 200K+ observations and 0 variables, and I get the error message: Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000107 EndHTML:0000001754 StartFragment:0000000127 EndFragment:0000001736

Warning: 270540 parsing failures. row col expected actual file 1 – 3 columns 1 columns ‘./cps_00035.csv’ 2 – 3 columns 1 columns ‘./cps_00035.csv’ 3 – 3 columns 1 columns ‘./cps_00035.csv’ 4 – 3 columns 1 columns ‘./cps_00035.csv’ 5 – 3 columns 1 columns ‘./cps_00035.csv’ … … … … … See problems(…) for more details. Warning message: The following named parsers don’t match the column names: YEAR, SERIAL, MONTH, HWTFINL, CPSID, ASECFLAG, ASECWTH, STATEFIP, PERNUM, WTFINL, CPSIDP, ASECWT, AGE, SEX, RACE, MARST, EARNWT, HOURWAGE

Help! What am I doing wrong?

2

The R code provided with your extract needs to be used with microdata (.dat file), not a CSV file. You can revise your extract to be a microdata file by clicking “Revise” next to your extract in the “My Data” tab, then click “Change” next to “Data Format”. From there, select “Fixed-width text (.dat)” as your data format and resubmit. If you choose to use a CSV file, you will need to use different commands to read the file, such as read.csv() or read.table(). These exercises (specifically Exercise 1 and Exercise 2 on the CPS) may be helpful to you in learning how to use IPUMS data in R.