A renewed source of data on families: the French Longitudinal Survey including fiscal records

Sébastien Durier, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE)

The « Echantillon démographique permanent (EDP)» is a French longitudinal database on individuals based on the collection of census data and various other administrative records (currently registers of births, marriages and deaths ; the electoral register; tax declaration of employers providing information on the wages and position of their employees ; tax declarations of households ) for a large sample of individuals. The general principle of the EDP is to follow, through the sources mentioned, individuals who are born in a fixed list of days, regardless of their year and place of birth. 16 sampling days were chosen, which, giving the actual size of the French population, yields a 2.9 millions sample of individuals. Launched in 1968, the EDP combined at its beginning only the census and registers of vital events (births, marriages and deaths), and collected information only for a quarter of the current sample size. This “historical” EDP lasted in this form until the 1999 census. Starting from 2004, EDP was adapted to the new census based on a continuous five year rotating sampling survey, by increasing the number of sampling days from 4 to 16 and by including new sources. The most important one is the tax declaration of households database, which, aside its comprehensive coverage of residents on a yearly basis, provides date of event as great details on the amount and the types of incomes each member of the household perceives. The presentation will describe the various sources on which the EDP is based and therefore will give a broad sense of the possibilities of such longitudinal databases. It will then focus on the methodology of the EDP. It will also develop some examples of studies which have been made possible thanks to the inclusion of the new sources.