# OCC1950 Variable: Only showing 1960 onwards? **URL:** \ **Category:** USA\ **Created:** [March 18, 2021, 11:18pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/occ1950-variable-only-showing-1960-onwards/4053 "2021-03-18T23:18:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Samantha\_Focht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Samantha\_Focht](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Samantha_Focht)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 11:18pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/occ1950-variable-only-showing-1960-onwards/4053/1 "2021-03-18T23:18:50Z")
Hello, I am using STATA and have decided to use the OCC1950 variable (instead of OCC1990 or OCC2010) due to it being standardized across all available years. Once I have downloaded the data into STATA, it lists the minimum value as “1960.” When I had read more about the OCC1950 variable, it said that it covered all years (from 1850-2019 presumably). Does anyone have any advice as to why this is happening, or how I may access occupational data 1850-1959? I am looking at doing a longterm analysis for a particular occupation. Thank you for any and all help! ---
**Author:** ![Matthew\_Bombyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Matthew\_Bombyk](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Matthew_Bombyk)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 8:01pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/occ1950-variable-only-showing-1960-onwards/4053/2 "2021-03-19T20:01:54Z")
The variable OCC1950 should be available in all samples back to 1850. Can you clarify what you mean by the minimum value being 1960? Does this mean your dataset does not have any observations from previous years? If that is the case, then either you did not include these samples in your extract, or possibly you excluded all cases from earlier years by using “select cases” and choosing a variable or a value that is not available in earlier samples. If there are observations from samples earlier than 1960, but they are missing OCC1950, then something else may be going on.