Description
For all event-condition link records, MEPSIDJ is a variable that uniquely identifies respondents across MEPS panels. It is created by combining PANELJ, DUIDJ, and PIDJ. IPUMS MEPS staff create MEPSID for the 1996-2017 samples to provide a single, universal linking key for MEPS persons. Beginning in 2018, AHRQ modified the identifiers DUIDJ and DUPERSIDJ (which combines DUIDJ with PIDJ) on the original MEPS data files to append information about PANELJ to the first two columns. This update makes DUPERSIDJ identical to MEPSIDJ in the IPUMS MEPS extract system for 2018-forward.
