1971 Census - IPUMS Subset
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1971
Get MicrodataIdentification
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | GBR |
UNITS IDENTIFIED:
- Dwellings: yes
- Vacant Units: No
- Households: yes
- Individuals: yes
- Group quarters: yes
UNIT DESCRIPTIONS:
- Dwellings: No
- Households: A household is either one person living alone, or a group of persons (who may or may not be related) living at the same address with common housekeeping. Persons staying temporarily with the household are included. A boarder having at least one meal a day with the household counts as a member of the household (breakfast counts as a meal for this purpose); but a lodger taking no meals with the main household counts as a separate one-person household, even if he shares kitchen and bathroom. A group of unrelated persons sharing a house or flat would count as one or as several households according to whether they maintained common housekeeping or provided their own meals separately.
- Group quarters: Yes
Version
Scope
Additional notes on a sample that is part of this study: United Kingdom 1971
Note: Excludes Northern Ireland
| Topic | Vocabulary |
|---|---|
| Demographic Variables -- PERSON | IPUMS |
| Geography: Global Variables -- HOUSEHOLD | IPUMS |
| Appliances, Mechanicals, Other Amenities Variables -- HOUSEHOLD | IPUMS |
| Technical Household Variables -- HOUSEHOLD | IPUMS |
| Education Variables -- PERSON | IPUMS |
| Geography: O-Z Variables -- HOUSEHOLD | IPUMS |
| Group Quarters Variables -- HOUSEHOLD | IPUMS |
| Work Variables -- PERSON | IPUMS |
| Household Economic Variables -- HOUSEHOLD | IPUMS |
| Technical Person Variables -- PERSON | IPUMS |
| Dwelling Characteristics Variables -- HOUSEHOLD | IPUMS |
| Nativity and Birthplace Variables -- PERSON | IPUMS |
| Constructed Household Variables -- HOUSEHOLD | IPUMS |
| Other Household Variables -- HOUSEHOLD | IPUMS |
| Constructed Family Interrelationship Variables -- PERSON | IPUMS |
| Work: Occupation Variables -- PERSON | IPUMS |
| Ethnicity and Language Variables -- PERSON | IPUMS |
| Other Person Variables -- PERSON | IPUMS |
Coverage
Region
All persons who spent census night of April 25/26 of 1971 in the household or joined the household on April 26th and who have not been included as present elsewhere; this comprises households, non-private establishments, on board a vessel, or elsewhere in the area of enumeration. In particular the enumerated population includes people who usually lived elsewhere, including abroad, but who were temporarily staying in the area on census night. Members of the armed forces and mercantile marine outside Great Britain on census night were excluded. Members of foreign or Commonwealth armed forces were included if present in the country on census night, but foreign and Commonwealth naval vessels, and the people on board them, were not enumerated.
Producers and sponsors
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Office of Population and Surveys for England and Wales | |
| IPUMS | University of Minnesota |
Sampling
MICRODATA SOURCE: Office of Population and Surveys for England and Wales
SAMPLE SIZE (person records): 465599.
SAMPLE DESIGN: Original data is a 10% sample. The original data was then stratified by household type and sorted geographically. One in ten households was subsequently systematically excluded. Persons living in communal estalishments or in households with more than nine residents were excluded. Finally, a 0.95% sample of households was extracted by selecting randomly 1-in-9 households from the remaining data. Individuals within communal establishments and those in households with more than nine residents were selected separately from data ordered by geography. No weighting was applied. NOTE: The sample excludes Northern Ireland. It includes England, Scotland and Wales.
Self-weighting (expansion factor = 100)
Survey instrument
(H) Form for private households, (B) Individual form; separate form for non-private households.
Data collection
| Start | End |
|---|---|
| 1971-04-26 | 1971-04-26 |
| Start date | End date |
|---|---|
| 1971-04-26 | 1971-04-26 |
- Face-to-face [f2f]
Both, CENSUS DAY: April 26, 1971
Access policy
| Is signing of a confidentiality declaration required? | Confidentiality declaration text |
|---|---|
| yes |
IPUMS International distributes integrated microdata of individuals and households only by agreement of collaborating national statistical offices and under the strictest of confidence. Before data may be distributed to an individual researcher, an electronic license agreement must be signed and approved. To gain access to the data, a researcher must agree to the following: (1) Implement security measures to prevent unauthorized access to census microdata. Under IPUMS International agreements with collaborating agencies, redistribution of the data to third parties is prohibited. (2) Use the microdata for the exclusive purposes of scholarly research and education. Researchers must explicitly agree to not use microdata acquired for any commercial or income-generating venture. (3) Maintain the confidentiality of persons, households, and other entities. Any attempt to ascertain the identity of persons or households from the microdata is prohibited. Alleging that a person or household has been identified is also prohibited. (4) Report all publications based on these data to IPUMS International, which will in turn pass the information on to the relevant national statistical agencies. Once a project is approved, a password is issued and data may be acquired through the Internet. Penalties for violating the license include: revocation of the license, recall of all microdata acquired, filing of a motion of censure to the appropriate professional organizations, and civil prosecution under the relevant national or international statutes. These safeguards mirror the principles from the Joint ECE/Eurostat Work Session on Statistical Data Confidentiality. Employees of the Minnesota Population Center who work with the census microdata to produce the harmonized database also sign agreements to respect the confidentiality of the data. IPUMS International works with each country's statistical office to minimize the risk of disclosure of respondent information. The details of the confidentiality protections vary across countries, but in all cases, names and detailed geographic information are suppressed and top-codes are imposed on variables such as income that might identify specific persons. In addition, IPUMS International uses a variety of technical procedures to enhance confidentiality protection. These include the following: (1) Swapping an undisclosed fraction of records from one administrative district to another to make positive identification of individuals impossible. (2) Randomizing the placement of households within districts to disguise the order in which individuals were enumerated or the data processed. (3) Aggregating codes of sensitive characteristics (e.g., grouping together very small ethnic categories) (4) Top- and bottom-coding continuous variables to prevent identification of extreme cases. The safety record for public-use census microdata is apparently perfect. In almost four decades of use, there has not been a single verified breach of statistical confidentiality. The measures implemented by the IPUMS International are designed to extend this record. |
An adapted version of the dataset, harmonized for international comparability, is available from IPUMS International (https://international.ipums.org/international/) under the following conditions:
IPUMS International distributes integrated microdata of individuals and households only by agreement of collaborating national statistical offices and under the strictest of confidence. Before data may be distributed to an individual researcher, an electronic license agreement must be signed and approved. To gain access to the data, a researcher must agree to the following:
(1) Implement security measures to prevent unauthorized access to census microdata. Under IPUMS International agreements with collaborating agencies, redistribution of the data to third parties is prohibited.
(2) Use the microdata for the exclusive purposes of scholarly research and education. Researchers must explicitly agree to not use microdata acquired for any commercial or income-generating venture.
(3) Maintain the confidentiality of persons, households, and other entities. Any attempt to ascertain the identity of persons or households from the microdata is prohibited. Alleging that a person or household has been identified is also prohibited.
(4) Report all publications based on these data to IPUMS International, which will in turn pass the information on to the relevant national statistical agencies.
Once a project is approved, a password is issued and data may be acquired through the Internet. Penalties for violating the license include: revocation of the license, recall of all microdata acquired, filing of a motion of censure to the appropriate professional organizations, and civil prosecution under the relevant national or international statutes.
These safeguards mirror the principles from the Joint ECE/Eurostat Work Session on Statistical Data Confidentiality. Employees of the Minnesota Population Center who work with the census microdata to produce the harmonized database also sign agreements to respect the confidentiality of the data.
Steven Ruggles, Lara Cleveland, Rodrigo Lovaton, Sula Sarkar, Matthew Sobek, Derek Burk, Dan Ehrlich, Quinn Heimann, Jane Lee, and Nate Merrill. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International: Version 7.6 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2025. https://doi.org/10.18128/D020.V7.6
Researchers should also acknowledge the statistical agency that originally produced the data: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Office of Population and Surveys for England and Wales. 1971 Census
The licensing agreement for use of IPUMS International data requires that users supply IPUMS International with the title and full citation for any publications, research reports, or educational materials making use of the data or documentation.
Copies of such materials are also gratefully received at ipums@umn.edu.
Printed matter should be sent to:
IPUMS International
Minnesota Population Center
University of Minnesota
50 Willey Hall
225 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
| Name |
|---|
| Office of Population and Surveys for England and Wales |
Disclaimer and copyrights
The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.
Contacts
| Name |
|---|
| Office of Population and Surveys for England and Wales |
Metadata production
| Name | Abbreviation | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| IPUMS | IPUMS | University of Minnesota |
Integration Harmonization Documentation |
Metadata version
--NO "new features" listed in Revision History
NEW SAMPLES.
--Six new census samples for Honduras (2013), Kenya (2019), Malawi (2018), Mongolia (2010, 2020), and Mozambique (2017) were added to the data series. All census samples extend pre-existing series for those countries.
--91 quarterly labor force surveys from the Philippines (1997 - 2019) were added to IPUMS.
SUPPLEMENTAL DATA.
--No "supplemental data" listed in revision history
NEW VARIABLES.
--New spatially harmonized birthplace and previous-residence variables are available for samples in this data release. More information is available here (https://international.ipums.org/international/geo_mig.shtml).
--Users should note that many older migration and birthplace variables are available by different names. Refer to this table for a crosswalk of old and corresponding new migration variables. For birthplace variables refer to this table (https://international.ipums.org/international/resources/misc_docs/migCrosswalk_names.pdf).
EDITED SAMPLES.
--For the Zambia 2000 sample, an error in the household breaks was corrected, resulting in the creation of 1,988 new households (1% increase) that were previously combined with other households. The person records included in the sample did not change. Due to an inconsistency in the original file, no household-level information other than geographic location is available for these newly identified households, necessitating the addition of "unknown" values for this sample to the following variables: BEDROOMS, ELECTRIC, FLOOR, FUELCOOK, FUELHEAT, OWNERSHIP, PHONE, RADIO, REFRIG, ROOMS, SEWAGE, TRASH, WATSRC, TV, TOILET, GQ, ROOF, WATSUP, BIKE, MOTORCYCLE, KITCHEN, GQTYPE, AUTOS, and WALL.
EDITED VARIABLES.
--For the 1998 and 2008 Malawi samples, the family interrelationship pointer variables MOMLOC and POPLOC were modified to allow a "Spouse/partner" of the household head to be linked as a parent to an "Other relative", because the enumeration instructions specify that adopted and stepchildren were categorized as "Other relative". These samples are now consistent with the links made in the newly released 2018 Malawi sample, which had the same enumeration instructions for adopted and stepchildren.
--In the samples for Côte d'Ivoire 1988 and 1998, Rwanda 1991 and 2002, Togo 1960 and 2010, and South Africa 2001, for the harmonized variable POLYGAM, persons in consensual unions were previously coded as "No, in monogamous union". Because there was no response option in these samples for polygamous consensual unions, it is more appropriate to treat these cases as not-in-universe, so they have been recoded to "NIU (not in universe)".
--MARST has been edited for Honduras 1974 to reclassify the source variable responses "married, wife lives separately" and "consensual union, companion lives separately" as separations. The documentation suggests that "separately" actually indicates a relationship separation and not an absent spouse or companion. Other minor edits were implemented for MARST for Mozambique 1997 and 2007.
--In the Mozambique 1997 sample, an error was corrected that recoded persons with a relationship of "Unknown" in the source data to "Other relative or non-relative" (6000) in the harmonized variable RELATE. These persons are now coded as "Not Stated/Unknown" (9999).
--In the Malawi 1987, 1998, and 2008 samples, for variable WATSUP, a programming error was corrected such that any households who reported having piped water in either the wet or the dry season are classified as having access to piped water. This programming was also applied to the newly released 2018 sample.
--The NATIVITY variable has been edited in the Chile 2017 sample to correct a programming error that mistakenly classified as foreign-born about 20 thousand person records that were actually native-born.
--The MIGRATE5 variable has been edited in the Chile 2017 sample, given a programming error that classified most migrants as having changed their major geographic unit. The MIGRATE5 variable for the Chile 1982 and 1992 samples has been edited to use spatially harmonized geographic units to calculate migration status.
--In the 1989, 1999, and 2009 Kenya samples, households who indicated that their lighting type or fuel was "Solar" were recoded from "No" to "Yes" in ELECTRIC, based on secondary sources documenting the spread of home solar energy systems in Kenya beginning in the mid-1980s. In the 1989 and 1999 Kenya samples, programming was removed that previously recoded households that reported using electricity as their main cooking fuel to "Yes" in the access to electricity variable ELECTRIC, making it more consistent across samples. Other minor edits were implemented for ELECTRIC in Botswana 2011, Ethiopia 1984 and 1994, Mongolia 1989, Mozambique 2007.
--Some samples in DISCARE classified responses indicating "some" difficulty into "yes". These cases were revised to consistently include in "yes" only responses indicating "a lot of difficulty" or "cannot do at all".
--Some codes were improperly labeled for municipalities in Honduras 1961 and 1974, which affect variables on place of residence, birthplace, and previous residence.