how to aggregate data to household level

CPS
1

Dear IPUMS staff, I was told that both Metarea and Metfips are not consistent along the year.

So now I am very very confused about which variable to use if I want to aggregate data to MSA level.

Specially, my question is:

I want to look at the distribution of household income in each MSA from 2005-2016.

So I need to aggregate data to a “Year-MSA panel” using CPS ASEC.

Can you give me some suggesstions about which MSA variable can I use to aggregate data?

Thanks!!!

2

One imperfect, but perhaps worthwhile method would be to limit your sample to only the metropolitan areas that can be identified in all of the years from 2005 - 2016. You can see which metropolitan areas these are if you follow the procedure described in this answer. This will allow you to aggregate data along the geography variable METAREA, but only for those areas which are identifiable in all years your are analyzing.

I hope this is helpful.