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Jeanne Cilliers . Photo

Jeanne Cilliers

Researcher

Jeanne Cilliers . Photo

Record linkage in the Cape of Good Hope Panel

Author

  • Auke Rijpma
  • Jeanne Cilliers
  • Johan Fourie

Summary, in English

In this article, we describe the record linkage procedure to create a panel from Cape Colony census returns, or opgaafrolle, for 1787–1828, a dataset of 42,354 household-level observations. Based on a subset of manually linked records, we first evaluate statistical models and deterministic algorithms to best identify and match households over time. By using household-level characteristics in the linking process and near-annual data, we are able to create high-quality links for 84% of the dataset. We compare basic analyses on the linked panel dataset to the original cross-sectional data, evaluate the feasibility of the strategy when linking to supplementary sources, and discuss the scalability of our approach to the full Cape panel.

Department/s

  • Department of Economic History

Publishing year

2020

Language

English

Pages

112-129

Publication/Series

Historical Methods

Volume

53

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Heldref Publications

Topic

  • History
  • Information Systems

Keywords

  • Census
  • machine learning
  • micro-data
  • panel data
  • record linkage
  • South Africa

Status

Published

Project

  • The Cape of the Good Hope Panel: Long-term studies of growth, inequality and labour coercion in the global south

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0161-5440