Global Health in Context: Linking Census Data to Health Surveys using IPUMS DHS and IHGIS

The IPUMS Demographic and Health Surveys (IPUMS DHS) and IPUMS International Historical Geographic Information System (IHGIS) have collaborated on a new feature enabling users to easily link contextual data from the censuses in IHGIS to individual-level records in IPUMS DHS. The new linking feature uses the DHS cluster points to identify the corresponding IHGIS unit where each respondent lives and provides the IHGIS unit code as a variable on DHS records. Population and agricultural census data from IHGIS are then easily joined to the records based on the unit code. IHGIS data are typically available at the second administrative level and often for even smaller geographic units. The fine-grained geography and richness of these collections facilitate a wide variety of interdisciplinary research. This webinar provides overviews of the IPUMS DHS and IHGIS collections, introduces the new linking features, and explores examples of research facilitated by the linkages. A written version of the questions and answers section of the webinar is available on the IPUMS tutorials page: https://www.ipums.org/support/tutorials