Description

GEO2_SL identifies the household's chiefdom within Sierra Leone in all sample years. Chiefdoms are the second level administrative units of the country, after districts. GEO2_SL 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_SL can be downloaded from the GIS Boundary files page in the IPUMS International web site.

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

Comparability — General

Boundary changes for GEO2_SL are too numerous to list, but users should be aware that there were changes over time. Chiefdoms with populations less than 20,000 (based on the most recent sample year) were regionalized (combined) with neighboring chiefdoms within the same district to create units with populations greater than 20,000.

Sierra Leone adopted new geography boundaries in 2017, following the 2015 census. GEO2ALT_SL2015 corresponds to these new geography boundaries.

Universe

Availability

• Sierra Leone: 2004, 2015