# Constructing a household panel

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/constructing-a-household-panel/634>\
**Category:** USA\
**Created:** [September 19, 2014, 8:38pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/constructing-a-household-panel/634 "2014-09-19T20:38:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lg\_econ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/43a26b/32.png) [@lg\_econ](https://forum.ipums.org/u/lg_econ)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 8:38pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/constructing-a-household-panel/634/1 "2014-09-19T20:38:00Z")

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Hi,

I’m trying to see if it’s possible to construct a household panel having US census data 1990-2000-(2005)-2010.

As far as I understand the extracts are random samples for each waves, which would only give me a repeated cross-section. Is there a way to select a random sample from one of the waves and follow it over time?

Thank you

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![grover](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/grover/32/5_2.png) [@grover](https://forum.ipums.org/u/grover)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2014, 1:16pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/constructing-a-household-panel/634/2 "2014-09-22T13:16:00Z")

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The Public Use Microdata Series is composed of a random sample of respondents from each year. Because there is no effort made to include the same respondents in multiple samples (with the ACS actively avoiding including the same households in consecutive samples), constructing a panel of respondents or households over modern samples is not possible (though historical samples have been [linked](https://usa.ipums.org/usa/linked_data_samples.shtml)).

I hope this helps.