...This paper improves on previous attempts to infer cohabitation from the decennial census. The 1990 and 2000 censuses included specific responses for unmarried partner in the relationship question; previous censuses classified these individuals in broader partner/roommate or partner/friend categories. Our goal is to infer as best we can which individuals in the censuses of 1960 though 1980 would have described themselves as opposite sex unmarried partners if that option had been available on the census. We do this by first developing rules to identify households that are likely contain an unmarried partner, and then by applying a regression model to refine these measures...

The 1880 US population database contains records for the over 50 million individuals enumerated in the census. This unique data set is the result of collaboration between the Minnesota Population Center (MPC) and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). To make census data available to genealogists. LDS volunteers transcribed the characteristics of all US residents in 1880. The MPC verified and corrected this transcription, in exchange for the right to disseminate the resulting database for scholarly and educational purposes. The authors consider editing and coding procedures and a range of problems: missing and incorrect geographic identifiers, data-processing errors, duplicate and missing cases, and inaccurate breaks between households. They also classify variables according to standardized coding systems, making the database compatible with the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS).

The 1880 U.S. population database contains records for the over 50 million individuals enumerated in the census. This unique data set is the result of collaboration between the Minnesota Population Center (MPC) and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). To make census data available to genealogists, LDS volunteers transcribed the characteristics of all U.S. residents in 1880. The MPC verified and corrected this transcription, in exchange for the right to disseminate the resulting database for scholarly and educational purposes. The authors consider editing and coding procedures and a range of problems: missing and incorrect geographic identifiers, data-processing errors, duplicate and missing cases, and inaccurate breaks between households. They also classify variables according to standardized coding systems, making the database compatible with the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS).

There have been significant changes in American living arrangements over the past century. Most men and women continue to spend much of their lives co-residing with kin. But an increasing proportion of men and women since World War II do not live with their relatives--rather, they reside as unrelated individuals. An important component of this trend has been the rise of the primary individual--typically defined as household heads who do not have co-resident kin. Part of the increase in primary living arrangements during the twentieth century resulted from changes in basic population characteristics among unmarried adults: i.e., sex, age, race, marital status, and migration status, but this was only true until mid-century. After 1950 the rate of change for both primary and secondary individuals (a group historically consisting of servants, farm laborers, boarders, and lodgers) accelerated, and the trends were largely unaffected by changes in basic population characteristics. Although there is a strong positive relationship between higher income levels and living alone as a primary individual, analyses shows that well under half of the increase in primary individuals was attributable to variations in income. Nevertheless, rising income levels were partially responsible for the changes in American living arrangements during the twentieth century. In addition, the broad-based effects of a more affluent society resulted in unmarried adults having a greater range of residential options. The expense and effort of maintaining an autonomous household meant that the living arrangement choices for most unmarried adults a century ago were limited to living with kin or as an unrelated individual in a non-relative's household. This was mainly true because of the time-consuming nature of basic household tasks, especially laundry and meal preparation. The increasing ability of unmarried adults to live as primary individuals resulted largely from a number of structural changes occurring in the decades before and after World War II: the construction of smaller, more economical apartments and the introduction of modern household appliances, which greatly reduced the amount of time required for maintaining an autonomous household.

Describes the system developed to encode geographical data for the Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) of the 1850, 1880, and 1920 US censuses. PUMS are random samples of households taken from the US decennial censuses and coded into computer format for use by historians and social scientists. The Social History Research Laboratory at University of Minnesota has done much of the work for the 1850, 1880, and 1920 PUMS. The coding of birthplaces was a straightforward process, but determining the place of residence became more problematic due to differences in political jurisdictions at the local level and incomplete information. In many cases, publications by the Census Bureau had to be consulted. The PUMS does not distinguish between rural and urban dwellers because of the many gray areas that exist in the population totals. Therefore, this variable must determined by the individual researcher.