Individual variable on Bundesland/District of residence (linked by pid)

Hi all! I was wondering if there is a variable linked by pid which provides data on the Bundesland and/or district of residence for individuals. I am particularly interested in individuals from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee sample. I have been working with „bula“ from regionl, however this variable only links to household id (cid), not personal identifiers, as far as I can tell.

I am sure I have probably missed something, but would greatly appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction! Thanks!

Hi Eirik,
I’m sorry for the late reply, I’ve been on vacation and just returned today.

You are correct with looking at the „bula“ variable in the „regionl“ dataset.
And it’s also correct that the regional information is about the household.
However, if you want to work on individual level, I strongly recommend to use the „ppathl“ dataset as the foundation of your analysis.
https://paneldata.org/soep-core/datasets/ppathl/

We call it a „tracking dataset“. In this dataset you will find all necessary key variables (for example „cid“ , „hid“, „pid“ , „syear“) to merge datasets and create your own dataset with the variables that you want and need to use.
If you want to learn more about tracking data, you might want to take a look at the two following links of chapters in our SOEPcompanion:
http://companion.soep.de/Data%20Structure%20of%20SOEPcore/Data%20Sets.html#tracking-data
http://companion.soep.de/Working%20with%20SOEP%20Data/Working%20with%20Tracking%20Data.html

I hope this helps and if there are any open questions, please feel free to ask! :slight_smile:

Best regards
Philipp

Hi!

I am also interested in this question. I looked into the ppathl dataset but there seems to be no variable indicating what federal state the respondents currently lives in. Did I miss something?

Many thanks and best wishes,
Andreas

Hi Andreas,

Yes, as I wrote before, the „bula“ (bundesland = federate state) variable is in the „regionl“ dataset.

Best wishes
Philipp

Hi Philipp,

all clear, thank you very much!

Best wishes,
Andreas