How to I identify the geographical location within which the household exists for household or person level datasets?
I’m looking to situate household and person level data down to the city/town in which each response was collected.
If you need data at the city level, the best available information available in most IPUMS USA samples is in the variables METAREA and MET2013. However, these variables do not always exactly line up with metro area boundaries, so be careful in your analysis. Please see this page and the “comparability” tabs for the METAREA and MET2013 variables for more information. Finer geographic detail than Metro area can be sometimes found in the variable PUMA and its precursors. For 1940 and earlier samples, you can identify county using COUNTYICP. Please see the Geography variable group for a list of all available geographic variables in IPUMS USA.
How can I connect the METAREA and/or MET2013 data to the EDUC variable?
I want to know where each response in the EDUC variable was located from.
You will need to create a data extract which includes both EDUC and METAREA/MET2013. Find the variables (and any others you need) using the interface here and add them to your cart. Then choose the samples that you want, and click View Cart. You want to make sure that your data “structure” is “Rectangular (person)”. This will give you a dataset which has one row per person, with both person-level characteristics (e.g., EDUC) and household-level characteristics (e.g., METAREA). Finally submit your data request and you will be emailed when the data is ready.