I am trying to estimate the number of people with livestock exposure in Minnesota.

1

I’m trying to determine the proportion of the Minnesota population that has exposure to livestock. I’ve received some input on possible data sources for determining livestock exposure, but from what I understand it provides an incomplete picture of overall proportion of the state that has livestock exposure. I’m still wondering though if this data could be used to get a good estimate of the number of people in the state that work with livestock or live on farms with livestock.

I’m a student at the University of Minnesota, and this is for a reserach project, so I’m also wondering if there is someone at MPC that I could meet with that could give me more guideance on answering this question, with the issues of data that provides an incomplete picture.

2

The best Minnesota Population Center resource for this question is likely to be IPUMS-USA. IPUMS-USA provides microdata that includes information about the industry in which a respondent works (IND1990) and identifies farm households (FARM). Specifically, IND1990 includes a category “011: Agricultural production, livestock” that should be of interest. IPUMS-USA allows you to identify geographies at the PUMA level within Minnesota.

Hope this helps. If you would like to discuss further how to use IPUMS data in the context of this project, please email us at ipums@umn.edu.