CPSID is a 14-digit numeric variable.

Description

CPSID is an IPUMS-CPS defined variable that uniquely identifies households across CPS samples. The first six digits of CPSID index the four-digit year and two-digit month that the household was first in the CPS. CPSID allows users to link a household record across samples, based on the 4-8-4 rotation pattern, by assigning a unique CPSID value based on a combination of household identifiers. CPSID will only ever appear for a maximum of 8 times, which is the number of times a household may be observed in the CPS survey (as indexed by MISH). In some cases, a household will appear fewer than 8 times due to migration, mortality, non-response, and recording errors. CPSID Extensive documentation about the creation of CPSID is available elsewhere.

CPSID may also be used to link ASEC households that appear in the March Basic Monthly file to other months of CPS data. This linking is made possible by IPUMS through the creation of MARBASECIDH. For further information about the relationship between the March Basic and the ASEC, please see our additional documentation.

Households that are part of the ASEC oversample (as indicated by ASECOVERH) may also be linked across ASEC samples, but not to the March or any other Basic Monthly sample. Note that MISH is not a reliable indicator of rotation pattern status for ASEC oversample records and should not be used to validate matches. For further information on linking records across ASEC samples, please see our additional documentation.

Users may also want to see CPSIDP and CPSIDV for more information about linking individuals across time using a person-specific version of CPSID.

Comparability

In 1977, the Census Bureau altered the method of generating unique household identification numbers, so households are not able to be linked between 1976 and 1977 using the original household ID numbers. IPUMS created a uniquely identifying number using padding variables in the original data which should allow users to match households between basic monthly samples using HRHHID. However, because CPSID strictly uses original identification numbers provided by the Census, CPSID is unable to link households between 1976 and 1977. For more details about CPSIDP creation in the 1976-1988 period, see Flood et al., 2020. For more details about CPSIDP from 1989 forward, see Drew et al., 2014.

Linked 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 ASEC samples likely include some false positive matches. Users are strongly encouraged to use CPSIDV or to perform their own validation of these linked datasets. In addition, non-response households in the 1995 ASEC are unable to link either to the March Basic Monthly or to any other ASEC samples. For more information on potential false positive links and unlinkable households, please see our additional documentation on ASEC oversample linking.

Universe

Flags

Unharmonized Variables