Sub-county location in 1950 full-count data

1

Hello,

I’m interested in calculating total employment by industry for sub-county areas in 1950 (cities, or ideally even census tracts) for the entire US population. However, there doesn’t seem to be any currently available data sources:

  • NHGIS has no data tables available for employment by industry for a sub-county geography
  • The PLACENHG variable is not availabe for the full-count 1950 sample
  • The CITY variable is only given for households in any city with 10,000+ inhabitants, and so appears to be not available for 24,143,395 individuals (based on the count for CITY==0000 in the case-count view)

I may be missing something, or may still be in development, or is only available in more restricted data, but if so I would greatly appreciate any information about that–or about any other sources/approaches I could use in the meantime.

Thank you,

Jacob

2

You are correct that the publicly available data in either IPUMS USA or NHGIS does not cover industry class for the full 1950 population at the sub-county level. As you note, the IPUMS USA variable CITY is only given for households residing in cities with 10,000+ inhabitants and is not identified for the remainder of the sample. Additionally, while some tables may provide detail about work at the tract level in 1950, not all parts of the US were tracted in 1950 so this coverage is partial. IPUMS USA full count census files from 1880-1940 provide the enumeration district that a household resided in ENUMDIST. Unlike Census tracts which only covered urban areas in 1950, enumeration districts are assigned to each household in the data and can be associated with other geographic units. Reach out to us at ipums@umn.edu, we may be able to share a preliminary version of a crosswalk between HISTID, STATEICP, COUNTYICP, and the enumeration district string value.

Alternatively, you can apply to access the restricted full count data, which includes street address. I invite you to review our page on restricted use data and the application process to see if this would be a good fit for you and/or your institution. Please note that the timeline for implementing fees on that page is out-of-date and we are currently in the process of implementing license fees. If you have any questions or would like more information on the restricted full count data, the application process, or the fee schedule, please email ipums@umn.edu.