I’ve been pulling down lots of IPUMS-USA variables for specific U.S. metros and U.S. cities using the MET2013 and CITY variables and checking “metros” in your “Select Cases” options. Now I want to look at same variables for entire United States (national average). What is best way to do this? Do I just select the CNTRY variable and clear all the “Select Cases” options? Will that make the download file enormous, so I should trim out some variables?
To get the data for the entire country, you can simply clear your select cases. The file will be quite large and analysis will take some time. To reduce the extract size, you could download the data for each sample individually (i.e. one extract for 2015 and another for 2000) and if you are currently extracting variables that you will not need, you should eliminate them.