There is no oberservation for same individual between 1976 December and 1977 January

CPS
1

Hi,

I am trying to aggregate the monthly CPS data using cpsidp in a way that I can link individuals’ employment status with the employment status they had last month. Yet, I found there are some breaks along the time line. No records for the same individual between 1976.12 and 1977.01 or btween 1977.01 and 1977.02 or between 1977.04 and 1977.05 or between 1977.06 and 1977.11… Is there any way I can fix this problem. So basically, if the agent is in this time range, I can not get their information last period. Is there any way I can fix this?

2

Unfortunately, this is a known limitation and challenge of linking individual observations in the CPS. As this presentation from our 2018 Summer Data Workshop notes, the 1977 supplement and basic monthly files do not have linking capabilities. Ultimately, since these early files were not specifically designed to enable linking, I am not aware of any way to “fix” this problem.