Question:
I am helping a researcher who is looking for “microdata (longitudinal if possible), but a snapshot would suffice as long as the dataset had information pertaining to individuals parental income class, their own education and their own current income class. I have been able to find data that details individuals wealth level and past education, I'm just having trouble finding data on past family income.”
In response, I have recommended the Survey of Financial Security, SLID (used to be longitudinal back in the 1990’s but isn’t anymore), Census, and LFS as these provide a snapshot but not the longitudinal /parental income aspect. I have also suggested the National Centre for Education Statistics https://nces.ed.gov/datalab/index.aspx – there are some table viewing options for accessing longitudinal statistics and links/ email contacts to request survey data. Would love to know if anyone has experience with any of these datasets.
Am hoping for recommendations in terms of variable / proxy for parental income.
Answer:
We’ve received the following response from subject matter:
“PSIS data linked to T1FF (available in RDCs) includes data on individuals program of study and graduation on the PSIS side, and on the tax side, individual and family income information is also available for prior years. There are a few caveats, which may or may not be significant limiting factors depending on what the researcher actually wants to do.
1. PSIS data only includes information for those who were attending a public postsecondary institution between the years of 2009 and 2016 (earlier years are available for the Maritime provinces and Newfoundland only). There are also data gaps during those years for certain jurisdictions/institutions.
2. Tax information for the family of a student is only available where it was possible to make a family link between individuals – which is not the case for everyone.
3. The most recent year of tax information available is currently 2016, meaning that the number of years of post-graduation income information available is limited.
4. I’m not sure if going to the RDC is an option for this researcher.”
