Using Linked Longitudinal Administrative Data to Identify Social Disadvantage

Abstract

Administrative data are widely used to construct indicators of social disadvantage, such as Free School Meals eligibility and Indices of Multiple Deprivation, for policy purposes. For research these indicators are often a compromise between accuracy and simplicity, because they rely on cross-sectional data. The growing availability of longitudinal administrative data may aid construction of more accurate indicators for research. To illustrate this potential, we use administrative data on welfare benefits from DWP's National Benefits Database and annual earnings from employment from HMRC's P14/P60 data to reconstruct individual labour market histories over a 5-year period. These administrative datasets were linked to survey data from the Poverty and Social Exclusion UK 2012. Results from descriptive and logistic regression analyses show that longitudinal measures correlate highly with survey responses on the same topic and are stronger predictors of poverty risks than measures based on cross-sectional data. These results suggest that longitudinal administrative measures would have potentially wide-ranging applications in policy as well as poverty research.

Ethical Considerations for Augmenting Surveys with Auxiliary Data Sources

“…Recent years have witnessed a surge in “third-era” social and behavioral research that addresses substantive research questions by combining auxiliary data with surveys. The applications are wide ranging: from studying job search behavior using native apps and sensors available on smartphones ( Sugie 2018 ), linking administrative data to investigate social disadvantage ( Pattaro, Bailey, and Dibben 2020 ), exploring the effects of air quality on health through the linkage of survey data and environmental sensor data ( English et al 2022 ), examining happiness by utilizing contextual data of participants’ geographic locations and EMA data collected through smartphones ( MacKerron and Mourato 2013 ), and many more (see, for example, an overview by Keusch and Conrad 2021 ). Administrative data is frequently used alongside survey data by National Statistical Offices, such as the US Census Bureau and Statistics Netherlands, and research institutes, such as the German Institute for Employment Research (IAB).…”