Adding a Top-Up Sample to the HILDA Survey

Abstract

Over the past decade, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey has become a major resource for economic and social researchers, both in Australia and elsewhere, with nearly 1800 registered users and 400 journal articles published by early 2013. Previous articles in this journal have documented the progress of the HILDA Survey (Wooden, Freidin and Watson 2002; Watson and Wooden 2004, 2010), with the most recent briefly discussing a proposal to augment the original sample with a new ‘top-up’ sample. One of the main reasons for adding a top-up sample is that the Australian population has evolved in a number of ways that the sample, selected in 2001 and followed over time through ‘following rules’, cannot emulate. In particular, the population now includes: i) immigrants permanently settling in Australia since 2001; ii) long-term visitors arriving since 2001; iii) Australians living overseas in 2001 who have since returned; and iv) Australian-born children of the first three groups. It is estimated that the first three groups represent 7 per cent of the Australian population in 2011, with permanent immigrants being by far the largest missing group