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IMPREL
Imputed relationship to household head
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Description

IMPREL reports the person's imputed relationship to the head of household. The variable was created for the 1850-1870 samples because these censuses did not collect the explicit family interrelationship information available for all other years (see RELATE). IMPREL relationships are the result of logical inference and statistical imputation, not direct transcriptions from the census forms. IMPREL is constructed in identical fashion for 1880 as well, to facilitate comparisons.

The most important IMPREL determinants are the order in which names appeared on the census form, surname similarity, age, sex, occupation, and birthplace. For about 75 percent of cases, the IPUMS assigns IMPREL according to logical rules based upon these determinants. For the remaining cases, the IPUMS uses a hot deck allocation procedure that examines a wider set of determinants to probabilistically assign IMPREL. See "Family Interrelationships" for more information.