For a study in social mobility in USA, I need to relate parents’ income with sons’ income at same age. How can I do it?
In principle users can use the ‘Attach Characteristics’ feature in the data extract system. This feature allows you to attach a characteristic of a person’s mother or father as a new variable on the person’s record line. For example, you could attach an income variable of a mother and/or father and have it show up as a new variable called “income of father” or “income of mother”. This feature used the IPUMS constructed family interrelationship pointer variables and can only be used for family members living in the same household. For your specific project, studying social mobility and wanting to link parents with children at the same age raises some complications. It seems like you’d want to link the parent’s income from around 1970 to the son’s income in around 2015, which cannot be done within IPUMS. IPUMS-USA does have a handful of linked samples which may be the best we can offer for your project.