Data & Documentation: Building Ethnic Identification into Census Data

The attached document, The Datasets (PDF 396K), compiled by Joseph Hirman, principal statistician for the project, provides a manual for replicating the analyses carried out by Gratton, Gutmann and their colleagues, and especially for identifying Hispanic and other ethnic groups. It will show how to create datasets representative of ethnic groups in the U.S. population, using birthplace and language identifiers. In this manual you will learn how to download microdata samples of Census data from the IPUMS site at the University of Minnesota and how to convert the data files to SAS datasets. Code is then provided for attaching household and parental information to the child, and for creating ethnicity, generation and household type variables.

For a description of how ethnic identification was carried out for Hispanic groups, see Brian Gratton and Myron P. Gutmann, "Hispanics in the United States, 1850-1990: Estimates of Population Size and National Origin," Historical Methods 33(3), Spring 2000: 137-153.

For questions regarding variables, definitions, and any other substantive issues, please contact Brian Gratton at brian@asu.edu

Use and Citation Policy

All persons are granted a limited license to use these data, subject to the following conditions:

1. No fee may be charged for use or distribution.

2. Publications, research reports, or internet materials based on the methods and code provided must cite the research project appropriately. The citation should be as follows:

   Brian Gratton, Myron P. Gutmann, and Joseph Hirman. "Ethnic Population Samples," Arizona State University and the University of Texas, 2000. www.icpsr.umich.edu/ATMAF/; supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant HD37824-02).

   and

   Steven Ruggles and Matthew Sobek et. al. "Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 2.0" Minneapolis: Historical Census Projects, University of Minnesota, 1997.

3. Users should send to brian@asu.edu a full citation of any publications, research reports, or internet materials making use of the data.

Background

In 1996-97, as a National Institutes of Health Senior Fellow (1 F33 HD08147-0), Professor Brian Gratton of the Department of History at Arizona State University worked at the Population Research Center (PRC) of the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Myron Gutmann, currently Professor of History at the University of Michigan and Director of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), served as sponsor for the Fellowship at Texas. During this period, Gratton and Gutmann designed a research project that would provide the first representative historical samples of the Hispanic population of the United States. Using the Integrated Public Use Samples (IPUMS), they created subsampling routines for all available censuses between 1850 and 1990, relying on birthplace, surname, and language characteristics.

The programs they have written provide data sets that, taken together, represent the Hispanic population in the United States in each census year. Using birthplace and geographic settlement patterns, Gratton and Gutmann also subdivided the Hispanic subsample into five major origin categories: Mexican, Spanish, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and known Other. With support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant HD37824-02), in the project "Assimilation Trajectories in Mexican American Families," the research team extended ethnic identification to a broad range of other groups and developed methods for attaching parental information to children and for defining family and household type.