Baseline Socioeconomic Microdata for Population and Health Research

描述(申请人提供)：本申请寻求资金，以创建一套完整的微观数据，描述1940年美国人口的社会经济特征。该项目将把有关收入、教育、住房和就业的关键信息数字化，极大地提高1940年人口普查在回答有关健康和人口变化的基本科学问题方面的有用性。1940年的人口普查第一次收集了关于完成学业年限、工资和薪金收入、上周工作时间和去年工作周的信息。有关父母收入和教育的数据对于评估儿童的社会经济状况至关重要。因此，这些指标对于评估早期生命状况对健康结果的作用将是非常宝贵的。由于该数据库将涵盖所有人口的全部地理细节，它将提供有关童年社区特征的背景信息，包括劳动力市场条件。更广泛地说，由于这些数据提供了有关关键社会和经济特征的最早可用信息，它们将为研究人口和经济变化提供重要的基线。社会经济变量将成为国家统计基础设施的永久性和实质性补充，并将对社会科学和行为科学的研究产生深远影响。该项目涉及(1)对描述1940年在美国所有个人的社会经济特征的10多亿键数据进行转录；(2)通过随机盲目核实和与公布的人口普查报告进行比较来评价数据质量；(3)数据清理，包括对不一致和缺失的数据值进行编辑和归类；(4)开发一个数据字典，将大约80,000种不同的对机构的不限成员名额的描述转换成与以前和以后的人口普查数据相一致的数字分类；(5)编写文件，包括对数据处理方法的全面说明、对可比性问题的详细分析以及全面的机器可处理的元数据；(6)将额外的变量纳入综合公共用途微数据系列(IPUMS)数据访问系统，免费向科学界传播；(7)实施安全的数据保护和保存政策。该项目将由一个经验丰富的研究人员团队执行，他们在大规模数据创建、集成和传播方面具有非凡的熟练程度。该项目是由明尼苏达州人口中心与全国最大的家谱数据生产商、人口普查局和国家档案和记录管理局合作完成的。这种合作使稀缺资源得以经济高效地利用，为人口和卫生研究开发共享的基础设施。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application seeks funding to create a complete set of microdata describing socioeconomic characteristics of the U.S. population in 1940. The project will digitize critical information on income, education, housing, and employment, greatly increasing the usefulness of the 1940 census for answering fundamental scientific questions about health and demographic change. The 1940 census was the first to collect information on years of schooling completed, wage and salary income, hours worked last week, and weeks worked last year. Data on parental income and education are essential for assessing childhood socioeconomic status. Accordingly, these indicators will be invaluable for assessing the role of early life conditions on health outcomes. Because the database will cover the entire population with full geographic detail, it will provide contextual information on childhood neighborhood characteristics, including labor-market conditions. More broadly, because these data offer the earliest information available on key social and economic characteristics, they will provide an important baseline for studies of demographic and economic change. The socioeconomic variables will make a permanent and substantial addition to the nation's statistical infrastructure and will have far-reaching implications for research across the social and behavioral sciences. The project involves (1) transcription of over one billion keystrokes of data describing socioeconomic characteristics of all individuals present in the United States in 1940; (2) evaluation of data quality through random blind verification and comparison with published census returns; (3) data cleaning, including editing and imputation of inconsistent and missing data values; (4) development of a data dictionary to convert approximately 80,000 different open-ended descriptions of institutions into numeric classifications compatible with previous and subsequent census data; (5) development of documentation, including full descriptions of data processing methods, detailed analysis of comparability issues, and comprehensive machine-processable metadata; (6) incorporation of the additional variables into the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) data access system for free dissemination to the scientific community; and (7) implementation of secure data protection and preservation policies. The project will be executed by a team of highly-experienced researchers with exceptional proficiency in large- scale data creation, integration, and dissemination. The project is a collaboration of the Minnesota Population Center with the nation's largest producer of genealogical data, the Census Bureau, and the National Archives and Records Administration. This collaboration allows a cost-effective use of scarce resources to develop shared infrastructure for population and health research.