Description

GEO2_MY identifies the household's administrative districts within Malaysia in all sample years. Administrative districts are the second level administrative units of the country, after state. GEO2_MY is spatially harmonized to account for political boundary changes across census years. Some detail is lost in harmonization; see the comparability discussion. A GIS map (in shapefile format), corresponding to GEO2_MY can be downloaded from the GIS Boundary files page in the IPUMS International web site.

The full set of geography variables for Malaysia can be found in the IPUMS International Geography variables list. For cross-national geographic analysis on the first and second major administrative level of any country refer to GEOLEV1, and GEOLEV2. More information on IPUMS-International geography can be found here.

Comparability — General

Where boundaries changed over time, units were harmonized to create units with boundaries that remain stable over time. Where officially-defined administrative districts have populations less than 20,000, they have been regionalized (combined) with neighboring administrative districts.

Boundary changes for GEO2_MY are too numerous to list here, but users should be aware that there were changes over time.

Missing states: The 1970 and 1980 samples are missing 2 states.

• Sabah (Labuan Federal Territory part of Sabah in 1970 and 1980)
• Sarawak

Universe

Availability

• Malaysia: 1970, 1980, 1991, 2000