IPUMS-DHS Geography and GIS boundary files
IPUMS-DHS provides three kinds of geography variables: harmonized, year-specific, and crosswalk.
- Integrated geography variables provide consistent geographic units for a country across sample years, to facilitate comparisons over time. Some geographic detail is typically lost in the construction of the harmonized units. GIS files for integrated geography variables with spatially consistent boundaries across years can be downloaded from the shapefile links below.
- Year-specific geography variables retain all of the original detail from each sample, but they are usually not fully consistent over time. GIS files for Year-specific geography variables corresponding to a specific DHS sample (e.g., Egypt 1988) can be accessed from The DHS Program Spatial Data Repository. Click on "boundaries," select your country and sample, and download the shapefile from the appropriate link at the bottom of the page.
- Crosswalk geography variables identify administrative units in IPUMS-DHS countries that match those in the IPUMS-International census data. The variables correspond to the primary level of geography in both IPUMS-DHS and IPUMS-International. The spatially consistent variables in the two databases allow researchers to summarize census data and attach these data as contextual information to the DHS samples or vice versa. GIS shapefiles are available at the links below. More on IPUMS-International spatially consistent geography can be found here.
Supported By
