IPUMS-International is an effort to inventory, preserve, harmonize, and disseminate census microdata from around the world. The project is a collaboration of the Minnesota Population Center, national statistical agencies, and international data archives. Major funding is provided by the National Science Foundation program in Social Science Infrastructure and the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Additional support is provided by the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Population Center, and Sun Microsystems.

Most population data—especially census data—has traditionally been available only in aggregated tabular form. The IPUMS-International is microdata, which means that it provides information about individual persons and households. This makes it possible for researchers to create tabulations tailored to their particular questions. Since IPUMS International includes most of the information originally recorded by census enumerators, users can construct a great variety of tabulations interrelating any desired set of variables.

The data series includes information on a broad range of population characteristics, including fertility, nuptiality, life-course transitions, migration, labor-force participation, occupational structure, education, ethnicity, and household composition. The information available in each sample varies according to the questions asked in that year and by differences in post-enumeration processing. A full listing of available variables can be found in the variable availability table.

A preliminary database describing forty-eight million persons in six countries is now available. This version includes the most commonly requested variables for twenty-one samples of the censuses of Colombia, France, Kenya, Mexico, the United States, and Vietnam between 1960 and 1999. Future releases will include additional variables and countries.

Use of these data is restricted to scholarly and educational purposes. Potential users must agree to abide by specified rules for protecting the confidentiality of the data and apply for access.