Hi is there a persistent unique id that would link person cases from the linked representative sample back to their respective original census – i.e. interested in merging information on link quality for linked cases from 1880 100pct <-> 1930 100pct
Unfortunately, there is no such ID readily available in IPUMS USA for these linked samples. It seems that including capabilities to link these linked records back to the original IPUMS USA files was not considered when these linked files were generated.
An idea that might work, but needs to be verified, is to use the existing information in the linked samples (that might be the same as the information in the original files) to assist in performing these links. Such variables may be SERIAL, PERNUM, REEL, PAGENO, and LINE. Do note that these are not guaranteed to link consistently, but they may be a reasonable place to start with this task.