Using City-Level Administrative Tax Data for Poverty and Mobility Research

We discuss two studies that utilize administrative tax data for poverty and mobility research in Washington, DC. As cities and states continue to vary in the level and type of social policy interventions, administrative data can provide unique opportunities to assess the efficacy of these local policy reforms. For state and local social policy research questions, we contend that administrative data are oftentimes favorable to survey data along the criteria of sample size, accuracy of both income and program participation, and the opportunity to use panel data econometric methods. Such administrative data can be supplemented in a variety of ways to further strengthen it. Overall, both survey and administrative data have unique features and should be viewed as complements to one another, not substitutes.