Sample selection in tax data sets of intergenerational links: Evidence from the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults

Administrative data sets have become increasingly popular sources of information to study mobility across generations. However, the inclusion of parent-child pairs depends on the primary purpose for which the data was collected. In the case of tax records, both parents and children must have worked and filed their taxes, and the children's labour market entry must have happened before they left the parental home. This paper documents selection in samples of parent-child pairs constructed from personal income tax records from Canada, and discusses implications for intergenerational research. It takes advantage of the fact that Statistics Canada's Longitudinal and International Study of Adults (LISA) includes both survey and administrative data to inform the nature and severity of the resulting sample selection. Results show that respondents who were successfully linked to their parents are more educated, and are more likely to have grown up in better educated, nuclear families. However, correcting for sample selection suggests that there is no bias in unadjusted estimates.