Creating research-ready data by linking Census data to ASHE

The project will create, assess, document and support use of a research-ready dataset, generated by linking personal data from the Census to employee records from the longitudinal Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE). This will provide the research and policy communities with a uniquely powerful longitudinal dataset, which can create new insights into the influence of personal and household characteristics, job characteristics and employers on labour market outcomes.

The UK censuses provide a wealth of information on individuals in the population but do not collect data on earnings, limiting their value for labour market research. ASHE is an annual panel survey based on a 1% sample of employee jobs in the UK, collecting detailed and highly-reliable information on employees' earnings and paid hours. However, the survey collects few personal characteristics for the employee (restricted to sex, age and residential location). The project will build on the respective strengths of these datasets to provide the largest longitudinal dataset for research on earnings and hours in the UK.

In the ADR-funded Wage and Employment Dynamics Strategic Impact Project (WED), the proposing team partnered with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to link person records from ASHE to person records from the 2011 Census for England and Wales (CEW11). This has added Census data on personal characteristics to around three-quarters (74%) of the 2011 ASHE records held by employees in England and Wales. The ASHE-CEW11 linked dataset is already enabling researchers in government and academia to explore how factors such as ethnicity, disability, education, country of birth and household circumstances affect individual's wage levels and pay progression. However, the value of the dataset would be significantly enhanced if the link was extended to the most recent census.

In the proposed project, we will work with ONS to link person records from the 2021 Census for England and Wales to the longitudinal ASHE, using a new and improved linkage protocol (ONS' Reference Data Management Framework, RDMF). The RDMF will also be used to relink ASHE to the 2011 Census for England and Wales, generating a longitudinal ASHE-Census dataset spanning at least a decade. The linkages between ASHE and Census will be quality assessed and documented. The project will focus on generating research-ready data, supported by a program of training and user support.

The resulting longitudinal ASHE-Census dataset will represent a significant improvement in the UK's data infrastructure for labour market research, providing more reliable earnings data, larger samples, and better employer information, than is currently available from existing household surveys. This dataset will support the aims of the program by using Census 2021 to provide fresh insights into the experiences of employees, enabling policymakers to make better-informed decisions.