Steven Ruggles

Steven Ruggles is Regents Professor of History and Population Studies at the University of Minnesota, and the Director of the Minnesota Population Center.

Ruggles, a historical demographer, received his Ph.D in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. He is best known as the creator of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), the world's largest population database. In 1995, Ruggles was described as the "King of Quant" by Wired Magazine. Ruggles has made important contributions to the study of long run demographic changes, focusing especially on changes in the family. His study of the effects of demographic change on family structure won the William J. Goode Book Award from the American Sociological Association and the Allen Sharlen Memorial Award from the Social Science History Association. Ruggles's work on migration censoring in family reconstitution led to an extended debate about biases introduced by the "Ruggles Effect." The method Ruggles proposed for correcting censoring bias in family reconstitution estimates of mortality was eventually determined to be more accurate than any of the alternative techniques that have been proposed.

In 2003, Ruggles received the Robert J. Lapham Award from the Population Association of America in recognition of lifetime contributions that blend research with the application of demographic knowledge to policy issues, and in 2009 he received the Warren E. Miller Award from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research for meritorious service to the social sciences. He served as the 2015 President of the Population Association of America, the first historian to hold the position.

In 1994, Ruggles married Lisa Norling, another historian. He currently lives in Minneapolis with his two children and his wife.

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