I am trying to use iPUMS to get an idea of how many parents are living in an area (with some income and education variables attached). How would I do this?
To identify parents in an IPUMS-USA sample, you could use the YNGCH variable, which reports the age of the youngest child living in the same household. Persons with no children present in the household have a YNGCH value of 99. You could also restrict your definition of parents to persons with children under a certain age (e.g. 18 years or younger). Then, anyone with a YNGCH value of that age or less would meet your criterion for being a parent.
Hope this helps.