I would like to link data from the Children Under-5 (Age 0–4) dataset with the Individual Women (Age 15–49) dataset in MICS. The link: IPUMS-MICS, do not provide guideline for linking in these two datasets.
Initially, I considered using only hhno and linemc as linking variables. However, I noticed that in the Children Under-5 dataset (Bangladesh MICS6), there are many repeated values for the variables linemc and linech. These variables are not unique identifiers, thus making linkage unclear.
Could you please advise how to accurately link these two datasets under these circumstances?
I will share some general comments about linking between units of analysis and then address your specific question.
The Line Number of Individual Persons table in the IPUMS MICS linking user note that you referenced provides the variable that reports a person’s line number depending on the unit of analysis. A person’s line number will be the same across units of analysis (i.e., a woman’s LINENO value in datasets that use household members as the unit of analysis will be equal to her LINEWM value in datasets that use women as the unit of analysis). These variables will only uniquely identify individuals within a household; to uniquely identify records within a single sample you will also need to use the variables CLUSTER and HHNO; if you are pooling together multiple samples you will also need to include the variable SAMPLE.
In the case of linking child (Age 0-4) records with the corresponding individual women variables, the child unit of analysis variable LINEMC will report the line number of the mother or caretaker of the child. If this woman was a woman respondent, it could be linked to the corresponding woman unit of analysis by matching a child’s LINEMC value to a woman’s LINEWM value. You will need to rename the variables so they are the same between the different files/units of analysis. You will also need to merge on SAMPLE, CLUSTER, and HHNO. One woman may have multiple children, so you will need to carefully consider which file you have in memory and which file you are merging on. The IPUMS MICS linking user note recommends having the child records in memory (as the base or “master”) dataset and then merging the woman file onto it because this is a many-to-one merge.