Historical Statistical Data - Primary Sources - History - Library Research Guides at Wellesley College

Spotlight On: Social Explorer

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
Interactive tool that combines modern and historical US census and demographic data with an intuitive map interface. Data from 1790-present.

Select datasets, manipulate geographic data visualization, download easily readable tables, and compare visualized data side-by-side.

American FactFinder
American FactFinder provides access to data about the United States, Puerto Rico and the Island Areas. The data in American FactFinder come from several censuses and surveys. Data begins in 1790.
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Reports on justice systems, crime, criminal offenders, and victims of crime. Data begins in 1979.
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
Researches data on food production and supply, organic sales, chemical use, demographics of U.S. producers, and more. Every five years it conducts the Census of Agriculture that provides agricultural data for every county in the United States. Data begins in 1840.
IPUMS
IPUMS provides census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space. IPUMS integration and documentation makes it easy to study change, conduct comparative research, merge information across data types, and analyze individuals within family and community context. Requires statistical analysis for data processing.
National Historical GIS: IPUMS
IPUMS hosts the National Historical GIS, which "provides easy access to summary tables and time series of population, housing, agriculture, and economic data, along with GIS-compatible boundary files, for years from 1790 through the present and for all levels of U.S. census geography, including states, counties, tracts, and blocks."

State Stats This link opens in a new window
Easy-to-use social and demographic data for all 50 U.S. states for the past 15 years that can be mapped, graphed, or exported to Excel.

Historical Statistics of the United States This link opens in a new window
U.S. statistics (mostly at the national level) from over 1000 sources, with downloadable tables in .csv and .xls formats and the ability to create customized tables and spreadsheets. Topics ranging from migration and health to crime and the Confederate States of America are each placed in historical context by a recognized expert in the field.
Data Planet Statistical Ready Reference This link opens in a new window
Quickly navigate the billions of points of data contained in the Data Planet Statistical Datasets repository. Search results are viewed as DataSheets, which include a trend, chart, map, or ranking, complete with descriptions of the dataset and data source. Heavily focused on 20th Century, but does include some earlier data especially population.
ICPSR: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research This link opens in a new window
Archive of downloadable datasets that can be used with statistical software packages. User-uploaded data, so topics are wide-ranging and often fairly specific. Includes some historical data, especially for US.

Association of Religion Data Archives
The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) strives to democratize access to the best data on religion. Includes both American and international user-submitted datasets. Data begins in 19th Century.
American National Election Studies
ANES produces high quality data from its own surveys on voting, public opinion, and political participation. Data starts in 1948.

UN Data This link opens in a new window
Search 55 million data points from across the UN system, covering economic, social, financial and development data, 1945 to present.

World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers [Trade] Series (ICPSR)
A major purpose of this data series was to determine worldwide and regional annual totals of military spending and to provide a basis for comparison with other economic information. Data begins in 1961.

Sage Data (formerly Data Planet) This link opens in a new window
An extensive repository of standardized and structured statistical data. Heavily focused on lat 20th Century, but does include earlier US and international data, especially population. Use this to pull data to analyze in excel or Stata. Includes government data.

Roper iPOLL This link opens in a new window
Searchable collection of 500,000 questions and answers from surveys collected by the major polling firms in the U.S. since 1935, with downloadable datasets.
Polling the Nations This link opens in a new window
Compilation of hundreds of thousands of public opinion survey questions and responses, at the local, state, national, or international level, 1986 to present.

World Development Indicators (WDI) This link opens in a new window
Over 550 development indicators (people, economy, environment, global, states and markets), time series for 208 countries and 18 country groups, 1960 to present.
International Financial Statistics This link opens in a new window
IMF time series data for GDP growth, inflation, unemployment, payments balances, exports, imports, external debt, capital flows, commodity prices. Data available from 1948.
Direction of Trade Statistics This link opens in a new window
Provides figures on the value of merchandise exports and imports by trade partners as well as area and world aggregates showing trade flows between major areas of the world. Annual data begins in 1947.

Penn World Tables
Data on about 30 variables for about 189 countries over some or all the years 1950-2010.