Working with 2022 microdata

Why the 2022 census is different

For every census up to 2010, the microdata are openly available, and {censobr} downloads them for you already processed. The sample microdata of the 2022 census are not: IBGE releases them as dados controlados, under controlled access. {censobr} is therefore not allowed to redistribute them, and there is no file for the package to download on your behalf.

What the package can do is read the file you obtained from IBGE and store it in the local {censobr} cache, in the same format and under the same naming convention as every other census year. That is what import_microdata22() is for.

Step 1. Get the data from IBGE

Request and download the 2022 sample microdata from IBGE at https://microdados.ibge.gov.br/. Download the version of the data saved in .csv format.

The file you receive is a single .zip holding one subdirectory per state, each with four tables:

Step 2. Import it

Once you have downloaded the original zip file with the data, you only need to pass the path to the zip file to import_microdata22(). Here’s an example using a tiny fake data set with the same structure as the IBGE file.

library(censobr)

# path to the zip file with the raw data 
fake_zip <- system.file(
  "extdata/microdata_2022_controlado_fake.zip",
  package = "censobr"
  )

censobr::import_microdata22(zip_path = fake_zip)

The function unzips the file, read each of the four tables, adds geography columns following the {geobr} convention, and save the data sets as .parquet files in the {censobr} cache directory. Depending on your machine this takes a few minutes, most of it spent on the Pessoas table.

And the data can be read back with {censobr} using the familiar verbs:

pop <- censobr::read_population(year = 2022)

fam <- censobr::read_families(year = 2022)

hou <- censobr::read_households(year = 2022)

mor <- censobr::read_mortality(year = 2022)

Keep the original zip file

After that the tables sit in the cache and are read from disk, with no further processing. The data imported via import_microdata22() lives in the cache directory even if censobr updates to a new data release. This means you only need to import the data once.

Nonetheless, we strongly recommend you store the original .zip from IBGE somewhere safe in case you need to import that data again