I downloaded al lthe avaialbe variables in “Personal” for the most recent 5 year sample and then also went to “Household” and downloaded all the variables under “Technical”. In my dataset, I have found 24264 times where the serial and pernum variable for an observation is identical to it’s lag. Can you help me in finding out why this is so? I am trying to find each unique person in the dataset.
I downloaded your most recent extract and when I inspected the data I found that the combination of SERIAL and PERNUM uniquely identified every individual in the sample. Perhaps your data file was not completely extracted. I would recommend downloading the data file again in a separate folder from your initial download and attempt to decompress the file using a program like 7-zip.
If you continue to experience this behavior feel free to respond to this question or email ipums@umn.edu.