Child/Parent Linking

HEALTH SURVEYS
1

In order to analyze the effect of parents’ occupation on a child, I need to identify parent/child pairs. I read this answer:

In the most recent samples available through IHIS the person numbers of mothers and fathers are available for children: https://www.ihis.us/ihis-action/varia… . These variables can be used to identify child-parent pairs. The IHIS project plans to create variables like for the samples prior to 1997 and make them available within the year. I hope this helps."

Which variables should be linked to identify parent/child pairs? I would appreciate a more specific answer.

(I also tried to use the method described here: https://usa.ipums.org/usa/chapter5/ch…. However, the same variables linked to PERNUM are not available.)

2

For children, the variables MOMPNUM and DADPNUM contain the PERNUM value for a child’s mother and father, respectively. Within a household (SERIAL), you can link a mother to a child by matching the mother’s PERNUM value to the child’s MOMPNUM value. Similarly, you can link a father to a child by using DADPNUM instead of MOMPNUM.

Hope this helps.