IPUMS by the Numbers

IPUMS has grown tremendously since the first download of an IPUMS data file in 1993. Over the last three decades, IPUMS has become the largest and most intensively used database covering the human population. We welcome you to explore IPUMS data for your research, and to join us in celebrating the latest stats about IPUMS data and the remarkable IPUMS user community.

 

DATA
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2.6 billion records
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165 countries
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63 million polygons
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582 billion table cells
DATA DOWNLOADS
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868 TB of data disseminated

In 2025, IPUMS disseminated 868 terabytes of data in the form of over 261,000 downloads from our web-based access system, 53,800 requests using our Application Programming Interface (API), and over 192,600 direct analyses of microdata with the Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA) online tabulator.

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1,300+ data requests per day

On average, users downloaded data 864 times per day from the IPUMS websites and API--that's 36 downloads per hour or one download every two minutes. IPUMS users analyzed data online with the SDA online tabulator an average of 528 times each day, 22 times per hour, or once every three minutes.

OUTREACH AND USER SUPPORT
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4,000+ conversations

We talked with data users and researchers interested in IPUMS data all around the world last year. We had over 4,000 conversations about IPUMS data between 11 conference exhibit booths, 13 workshops and webinars, four virtual office hours sessions, and over 1,700 email exchanges and User Forum posts. We reached 1,250 data users through webinars in 2025. We sent 24 newsletters to data users alerting them to new data and features, and our research staff wrote 17 blog posts detailing news from IPUMS. These numbers capture our formal outreach work; they don't include the meetings and email exchanges of individual IPUMS research staff members around data preservation, new features and collaborations, or exciting research developments.

IPUMS user community
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93,000+ active data users

The IPUMS user community includes researchers, policymakers, non-governmental organizations, journalists, students and educators, as well as curious individuals who want to learn more about their neighborhood and the world. There are over 93,000 active users (those accessing data in the past two years) from 155 countries; the full IPUMS user community exceeds 340,000.

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2,200+ bibliography entries

In 2025, we added more than 2,200 publications to our bibliography of #poweredbyIPUMS work. Journal articles comprised 47% of #poweredbyIPUMS publications in 2025. We also saw high numbers of theses/dissertations (13%) and working papers (14%). Each January, we ask you to share your publications from the previous year so we can recognize outstanding work as part of our annual research awards competition.