The Minnesota Historical Census Projects

This special issue describes the historical census projects at the University of Minnesota. These projects involve the development of historical public use samples of nineteenth-century U.S. censuses including the development of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. This "database will include information on over 50 million individuals spread over 140 years of extraordinary social and economic change. We expect that the unprecedented potential to locate individual behavior in time and spatial context will generate important new research on topics such as fertility urbanization immigration household composition and occupational structure." (EXCERPT)