How would I do so? With Serial #s?
The NHIS and public use microdata samples (PUMS) for the decennial census and American Community Survey (ACS) available via IPUMS USA are different data collections with different sampling frames and target populations. These data are drawn independently of one another; it is unlikely that an individual is in both the NHIS and the PUMS files available via IPUMS USA, and if they were there is no way to identify them using the public data. SERIAL is a sample-specific variable that you can use to uniquely identify households within a given sample. It cannot be used to link cases across data collections.
There are several possibilities for linking with these data listed below; please let me know if you would like to learn more about any of these:
- IPUMS NHIS offers variables from the linked mortality file, which links adults in the NHIS with death certificate records from the National Death Index
- The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (available via IPUMS MEPS) uses the NHIS as a sampling frame; linking keys to follow persons between the surveys between the two surveys are not publicly available, but are available to approved researchers in restricted-use environments (e.g., an FSRDC)
- The IPUMS Multigenerational Longitudinal Panel (MLP) links individuals’ records between full count censuses from 1850-1940