I am trying to conduct a cohort analysis for all children aged 0-5 in the US, specifically looking at the age characteristics of their parents. I am unfamiliar with the IPUMS database and would appreciate any advice on if this is possible and what variables to search by to get this information.
The two IPUMS data sources that are likely of most interest to you are IPUMS USA and IPUMS CPS. Both of these databases are comprised of microdata and provide detailed household member variable coverage.
IPUMS USA is a database providing access to high-precision samples of the American population drawn from federal censuses, from the American Community Surveys of 2000-present, and from the Puerto Rican Community Surveys of 2005-present. While similar to the CPS family interrelationship variables, I also recommend referencing the IPUMS USA family interrelationship User Guide to understand the variables available for household and family relationships. Both the IPUMS USA and IPUMS CPS family interrelationship user guides provide examples with the ages of family and household members. I would recommend starting with the IPUMS USA video tutorials and maybe the FAQ page.
The IPUMS CPS is a longitudinal dataset that contains both monthly labor force survey (Basic Monthly Survey, or BMS) with monthly sample sizes of around 70,000 households and ~95,000 persons and the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) which is a supplement to the BMS that provides annual variable coverage with detailed data on income, poverty, health insurance and work experience. I recommend referencing the IPUMS CPS family interrelationship variables User Guide to get acquainted with IPUMS CPS data and their household/family variable coverage.
Without knowing exactly your research goals or approach to cohort analysis, I can offer a few additional tips and resources that may be of use to you. IPUMS, by identifying and linking parents with their co-resident children, is able to offer the characteristics of participants’ parents as additional variables using the attach characteristics tool. Once you’ve added the variables of interest to your data cart and continue to the extract request options menu, you will see a button to Attach Characteristics (see screenshot below). When you click this, you should see the option to attach AGE values for the household head, mother, father, and spouse.
It is only possible to obtain a respondent’s mother’s/father’s AGE value in cases where we are able to identify their mother/father from among the person records within the household. If we do not identify mother/father in the household, then AGE_MOM/AGE_POP will be missing. More information about this procedure is provided in the linking variables MOMLOC and POPLOC.