# Is is possible to download the original March CPS variable for serial number?

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/is-is-possible-to-download-the-original-march-cps-variable-for-serial-number/2150>\
**Category:** CPS\
**Created:** [February 6, 2018, 2:16pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/is-is-possible-to-download-the-original-march-cps-variable-for-serial-number/2150 "2018-02-06T14:16:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![david.d.dratner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@david.d.dratner](https://forum.ipums.org/u/david.d.dratner)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2018, 2:16pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/is-is-possible-to-download-the-original-march-cps-variable-for-serial-number/2150/1 "2018-02-06T14:16:00Z")

</div>

For example, the variable “serialno” in 1975 is a 2 digit number starting in position P217. Thanks

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Michelle\_Pratt](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/michelle_pratt/32/194_2.png) [@Michelle\_Pratt](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Michelle_Pratt)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2018, 2:57pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/is-is-possible-to-download-the-original-march-cps-variable-for-serial-number/2150/2 "2018-02-06T14:57:00Z")

</div>

Unfortunately, household serial number created by the Census Bureau and included in the original CPS data is not available for download through IPUMS CPS. Are you trying to link data between samples and/or sources? If so, you may be interested in the household [technical](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/group/h-tech) and [linking](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/group?id=h-linking) variables that we do have available.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![david.d.dratner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@david.d.dratner](https://forum.ipums.org/u/david.d.dratner)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2018, 3:48pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/is-is-possible-to-download-the-original-march-cps-variable-for-serial-number/2150/3 "2018-02-06T15:48:00Z")

</div>

I would like to longitudinally link ASEC samples from 68-. This is possible with the original serial number. Perhaps I can merge NBER or Unicon data to the IPUMS data to get the original serial number. Is there a fool-proof way to do that? Thanks very much for your quick response.

David

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Michelle\_Pratt](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/michelle_pratt/32/194_2.png) [@Michelle\_Pratt](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Michelle_Pratt)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2018, 7:55pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/is-is-possible-to-download-the-original-march-cps-variable-for-serial-number/2150/4 "2018-02-07T19:55:00Z")

</div>

Unfortunately, we don’t have anything that will work for your purposes going back to 1968. However, available from 1989 on for the ASEC is [CPSID](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/CPSID#description_section), which uniquely identifies households across CPS samples. If you are interested in merging household records from the ASEC to their corresponding March Basic data, you could use [MARBASECIDH](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/MARBASECIDH#description_section), which is also available from 1989 on.