Frozen Film and FOSDIC Forms: Restoring the 1960 U.S. Census of Population and Housing

Abstract

In this article, the authors describe a collaboration of the Minnesota Population Center (MPC), the U.S. Census Bureau, and the National Archives and Records Administration to restore the lost data from the 1960 Census. The data survived on refrigerated microfilm in a cave in Lenexa, Kansas. The MPC is now converting the data to usable form. Once the restored data are processed, the authors intend to develop three new data sources based on the 1960 census. These data will replace the most inadequate sample in the series of public-use census microdata spanning the years from 1850 to 2000, extend the chronological scope of the public census summary files, and provide a powerful new resource for the Census Bureau and its Research Data Centers.

Keywords:

• census
• data recovery
• demography
• IPUMS
• microdata
• Minnesota Population Center
• public-use sample

Acknowledgments

The purpose of this article is to inform interested parties of ongoing research and to encourage discussion of work in progress. Any views or opinions in the article are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Notes

The New Data Resources from the 1960 U.S. Census project at the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, is funded by the National Institutes of Health, Grant Number 5RO1HD056215-04.

1. Household-level sampling had been considered for the 1940 census, but it was rejected because it did not fit as well with “the established census procedures” and because of concern about the impact of clustering on sample efficiency (Stephan, Deming, and Hansen 1940, 620).

2. This percentage excludes 11 articles that did not specify sample density.

3. In addition, for many years the tracts from New Jersey were thought to have been lost, but now most of the New Jersey tracts have been recovered. Some of the missing New Jersey tracts are available in the Elizabeth Mullen Bogue (1975) data set. Except for New Jersey, the 1960 Bogue file is redundant with information in the DUALabs tract file (U.S. Census Bureau 1971).

4. A directory of these data centers can be found at http://www.census.gov/ces/main/contact.html (U.S. Census Bureau 2011).