Census Tree Links

The data sets in this repository allow users to link people among the U.S. decennial censuses, using the "histid" identifier. The census data sets users will need are indexed by Ancestry.com and are hosted by IPUMS at https://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/samples. Users will need to download the full-count census for each year and be sure to select the "histid" variable that is available under the Person/Historical Technical drop-down menu. As of 7/12/21, links are available between the 1900-1910, 1910-1920, and 1900-1920 censuses. A detailed account of how these links are created and a description of the data and its characteristics are available in the following article: Price, J., Buckles, K., Van Leeuwen, J., & Riley, I. (2021). Combining family history and machine learning to link historical records: The Census Tree data set. Explorations in Economic History, 80, 101391. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498321000024