Description

GEO2_CO identifies the household's municipality within Colombia from 1973 to present. Municipalities are the second level administrative units of the country, after departments. GEO2_CO 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_CO can be downloaded from the GIS Boundary files page in the IPUMS International web site.

The full set of geography variables for Colombia 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

Colombia 1964 sample is not included in GEO2_CO. There were no source maps available for the 1964 sample.

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

Municipalities in GEO2_CO are not entirely contained within their higher first level geographical units, departments. This is because the harmonized first level geography was created based on 1964 – 2005 samples while the second level geography was created based on 1973 – 2005 samples.

Boundary changes for GEO2_CO are too numerous to list here, but users should be aware that there were changes over time.

Missing departments: The 1993 sample is missing 2 departments.

• Guainía
• Vaupés

Universe

Availability

• Colombia: 1973, 1985, 1993, 2005