Creating an Integrated Longitudinal Person and Household Dataset by Linking State-based Administrative Data

This paper documents the linking of education data to an integrated data system (Multi-Sample Person File) on employment and social assistance receipt for students and households in the State of Wisconsin for a research project. As the authors describe: "The purpose of this paper is to document the long and difficult process that we have worked through in our formation of a reliable linked administrative data set, created from numerous databases available from several public agencies. Our hope is that our experience in confronting and solving the numerous issues in constructing a reliable single dataset from numerous and unrelated administrative databases will be of help to others considering this research strategy."