Abstract: The Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) is the most widely used type of Current Population Survey (CPS) data, but it is cumbersome to use the ASEC as part of a longitudinal CPS panel, especially linking to non-March months. In this paper, we detail the challenges associated with linking the ASEC to monthly CPS data, outline the creation of an identifier that links the ASEC and the March Basic Monthly data from 1989 through 2017, and provide substantive examples that illustrate the value of combining the ASEC with monthly data. The variable, MARBASECID, which we created to link ASEC and…March monthly CPS data, represents a significant contribution to social and economic data infrastructure, saving individual researchers from having to duplicate the effort required to create linkages between ASEC and monthly CPS data.
Show more
Keywords: Current Population Survey, data infrastructure, data integration, linking, panel data
Abstract: The Current Population Survey (CPS) has been the nation’s primary source of information about employment and unemployment for decades. The data are widely used by social scientists and policy makers to study labor force participation, poverty, and other high-priority topics. An underutilized feature of the CPS is its short-run panel component. This paper discusses the unique challenges encountered when linking basic monthly data as well as when linking the March basic monthly data to the Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplement in the 1976–1988 period. We describe strategies to address linking obstacles and document linkage rates.
Keywords: Data integration, linking, panel data, current population survey