# How can you see the male/female proportion of children in IPUMS USA, analyze data online? How to specify variables

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/how-can-you-see-the-male-female-proportion-of-children-in-ipums-usa-analyze-data-online-how-to-specify-variables/466>\
**Category:** USA\
**Created:** [March 27, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/how-can-you-see-the-male-female-proportion-of-children-in-ipums-usa-analyze-data-online-how-to-specify-variables/466 "2014-03-27T19:38:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![demographystudent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/45deac/32.png) [@demographystudent](https://forum.ipums.org/u/demographystudent)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/how-can-you-see-the-male-female-proportion-of-children-in-ipums-usa-analyze-data-online-how-to-specify-variables/466/1 "2014-03-27T19:38:00Z")

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I am trying to get information on the proportion of male/female children for a certain demographic in IPUMS USA, using the analyze data online. I think the issue is that there isn’t a specific variable-- there is number of children, for example, but I am having trouble extracting characterstics of children, such as gender. How do I specify the variables to get a frequency for the proportion of male/female children in a certain demographic? I have a feeling that it involves using the Age, Sex, Relate functions and possibly more

Thank you!

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**Author:** ![grover](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/grover/32/5_2.png) [@grover](https://forum.ipums.org/u/grover)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2014, 11:19pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/how-can-you-see-the-male-female-proportion-of-children-in-ipums-usa-analyze-data-online-how-to-specify-variables/466/2 "2014-03-27T23:19:00Z")

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To get familiar with how the Online Analysis tool works, I highly recommend watching the [Tutorial Video](https://usa.ipums.org/usa/tutorials.shtml), paying particular attention to the segment on filters. Using age as a filter you can limit the sample population to children. Simply type age(0-18) into the Selection Filters: box. This will give you results for all respondents between the ages of 0 and 18. Since you are interested in comparing males and females you will want to put the sex variable in the Column: box. By default, percentages are calculated for columns, but you can change this in the TABLE OPTIONS: under Percentaging. Depending on what demographic you are looking for, you can either apply more filters (separated from age(0-18) with a single space) to restrict your population further, or you can add a variable as a row. For example if you type race into the Row: box, with sex in the Column: box and age(0-18) as a filter, the resulting table will provide the percentages of male/female children in each race (e.g. in the 2012 ACS, 68.3% of Males 18 or younger are White).

The [Instructions Page](https://usa.ipums.org/usa/resources/sda/sdainstructions.pdf) from IPUMS-USA is also very helpful for understanding how to use the Online Analysis tool.

I hope this helps.