I am currently researching the trends of wealthy people in large metro areas. I am trying to use the IPUMS_USA to pull data and am running into some difficulties. Is it possible to pull data for 75 plus year old households that have incomes or net worth over 1 million dollars. I am trying to figure out how many people exist that meet those guidelines. I would then like to search that on as narrow of a window as possible for location. I believe that is curently a metro area as I read in different posts that it is not possible to track at a zip code level. (although that would be great if possible)
Variables that would be useful for my research include age, income, home value, net worth, marriage status, and education level.
I truly would appreciate help in how I might search for this information… if it exists.
The data provided in IPUMS-USA are microdata, which means certain steps are taken to preserve the anonymity of respondents. The data you are interested in is available, however you will find that since the scope is quite narrow, a small number of cases will meet the specifications and the data may not be geographically representative.
You can identify total household income through the variable HHINCOME, which equals the sum of all household members’ individual incomes, as recorded in the variable INCTOT. Something to keep in mind is that while this variable is not top-coded for modern samples, it represents the sum of several income variables that are themselves already top-coded. The age of respondents is identified with the AGE variable, and the Houston metro area has a MET2013 value of 26420. The lowest level of geography that can be identified in ACS samples is the PUMA, which each contain at least 100,000 residents. You can find more information about which PUMAs contribute to Houston’s metropolitan area on the link titled “Crosswalk Between 2013 MSAs and 2010 PUMAs” on the description page for MET2013. Other variables that you indicated may be helpful are MARST, EDUC, and VALUEH.
More granular geographic detail can only be found in aggregate data, however I have only been able to find published Census tables that define top-tier income categories as $200,000+ and older adults as ages 60+. You can explore aggregate data either through the MPC’s NHGIS project, which offers many of the official Census tables going back to 1790 at several geographic levels, or through the Census’ American FactFinder site.
Finally, if you are new to IPUMS-USA, I recommend watching our video tutorials and checking out our FAQ page to help guide you through the process of selecting variables, creating an extract, and opening it into the statistical package of your choice.
I hope this helps!