Jeanne Cilliers
Researcher
Record linkage in the Cape of Good Hope Panel
Author
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