# Problems linking ASEC CPS data in 1985-1986, 1994-1995 and 1995-1996

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/problems-linking-asec-cps-data-in-1985-1986-1994-1995-and-1995-1996/1745>\
**Category:** CPS\
**Created:** [May 22, 2017, 10:32am UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/problems-linking-asec-cps-data-in-1985-1986-1994-1995-and-1995-1996/1745 "2017-05-22T10:32:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![uctpdtz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ce73a5/32.png) [@uctpdtz](https://forum.ipums.org/u/uctpdtz)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/problems-linking-asec-cps-data-in-1985-1986-1994-1995-and-1995-1996/1745/3 "2017-05-22T18:30:00Z")

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Thanks Jeff. This is related to my question here:

> [@Calculating wage growth for individuals over two consecutive months](https://forum.ipums.org/t/calculating-wage-growth-for-individuals-over-two-consecutive-months/1743/1):
>
> I’d like to exploit the panel dimension of the monthly files to calculate monthly wage growth for individuals. My naive quick attempt in stata was: gen modate = ym(year, month) format modate %tm xtset cpsidp modate gen wgegrwth=hourwage/L.hourwage-1 However, I don’t get any values generated for this (all data missing). No doubt this is too naive but any thoughts on best practice welcome.

I need to link data before 1989 so tried to construct my own version of MARBASECID. This seems to work well for most years except the ones mentioned above, which seem to have been problematic for other authors. I will have a good read through the paper you suggested and see if I can find the answer there, though of course if anything occurs to you please let me know.

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