Hello, I am trying to create HIUs in my March 2011 CPS dataset (raw data is cpsmar11.dta from the CPS website). I’ve already created multiple variables and would like to create the HIUs directly on the dataset I’m working with. I understand that for the creation of HIUs following this process http://www.shadac.org/files/shadac/publications/HIU_STATA.txt I need the variables YEAR, DATANUM, SERIAL, HHWT, GQ, PERNUM, PERWT (pre-selected by IPUMS) and STATEFIP, MOMLOC, POPLOC, SPLOC, NCHILD, RELATE, AGE, SEX, MARST. Can I merge these variables onto my March 2011 CPS dataset?
There are no shared identifiers in the raw March 2011 CPS data and the corresponding IPUMS file that would allow you to merge IPUMS variables onto the raw file. However, I believe that the IPUMS file and the raw file will share the same sort order, and so you could perform a sequential merge to add those variables. We know this is true of the NBER CPS files, but we haven’t verified this with those raw files available through other sources.