Definition
POPDENSITY consists of a set of 5 separate variables. These variables report the population density - people per square kilometer of land area - within a 5 kilometer circular buffer around each DHS cluster location, in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020. By adding POPDENSITY to your data cart, you are in effect adding 5 separate variables (POPDENSITY_2000 - POPDENSITY_2020), one variable for each month. Values for POPDENSITY are based on population projections from the results of the 2000 and 2010 rounds of censuses.
POPDENSITY variables can be used as indicators of urban versus rural status, with the cut-off levels for these categories decided by the researcher, for greater consistency in measurement than the DHS URBAN variable.
POPDENSITY, like the other IPUMS-DHS contextual variables, is calculated and based on sources external to the DHS data. For more information on IPUMS-DHS contextual variables and how they are constructed, refer to the documentation [URL omitted from DDI.] on these variables.