Exploring the Utility of Linking Data on Domestic Migration: Preliminary matching of the 2010 American Community Survey and 2009 National Change of Address File

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Working Paper Number: SEHSD-WP2015-14

Introduction

This paper discusses the utility of the National Change of Address (NCOA) database in providing supplemental geographic specificity to the self-reported movers in the American Community Survey (ACS).  In the analysis, migration flow pairs (moves between residence origins and destinations) were constructed for records in both sets of data and then individuals were matched through the Person Identification Validation System (PVS).  Findings reported here suggest that the complexity of the move match process between datasets is highly resource intensive. Using the NCOA to supplement missing geographic information for matched movers during normal ACS processing would not be feasible at this time.

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