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The 1950 census for the USA, holding records of 150 million people, was released online today for free.<\/p>\n
Unlike the UK, where privacy laws mean census records cannot be published for 100 years, the US census is released after 72 years and is now available on a website<\/a> run by America\u2019s National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).<\/p>\n The records, which include images of the original census schedules, can be searched by name and filtered down by state, town, enumeration district or Indian reservation.<\/p>\n However, unlike census records on commercial family history websites, they lack the ability to search by age. This can make it harder to filter the results.<\/p>\n For example, since the records do not redact the names of living individuals, WDYTYA? Magazine<\/em> searched for US president Joe Biden.<\/p>\n Searching for \u2018Joseph Biden\u2019 brought up 400 pages of results, making them hard to find.<\/p>\n However, since we knew the president was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, we entered those details into the search engine under \u2018State\u2019 and \u2018County\/City\u2019, and found the correct record as the first result.<\/p>\n The census results show Joseph Biden, age seven, living at the house of his maternal grandfather AJ Finnegan, with family members including his parents Joseph and Catherine and siblings Mary and James.<\/p>\n The US census records include details of each person\u2019s relationship to the head of household, race, sex, age and marital status and details of their profession.<\/p>\n