Dear users,
I have been trying to sort out what to do about observations for birth country that include Yugoslavia. For example, in bpcountry you have, for Eastern Europe:
41100 Ukraine
41991 Albania, Bulgaria, Czech, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia
41992 Central-Eastern Europe
and then later you have, for Southern Europe:
Does anyone know how we can “distribute” the population of Yugoslavia by the current existing countries, if such a thing is possible? How were these categories generated? The original variables/questionnaires for these countries are not available in the respective tabs.
Thank you!
Generally which category is used depends on how the respondent gave their answer, and how the Statistical agency chose to group countries. For example, code 41991 appears only to have been used in 1991 by the UK. Most countries only started recording the component nations of Yugoslavia as possible birthplaces after they became independent. If you look at the source variables for BPLCOUNTRY, you will find more details on how the question was asked in each census. However, these do not always give the coding rules used, and moreover IPUMS does not have access to the original responses, only these coded source variables. I don’t think there is a reliable way to distribute individuals who were listed as born in Yugoslavia to the constituent countries using the IPUMS data.