Strategies for constructing household and family units with linked administrative records

Children’s circumstances are inextricably tied to those of their parents. Two-generation intervention strategies recognize that improving the capacity and circumstances of parents will yield benefits in this generation and the next. Administrative data from health and human services agencies present a unique source of information concerning these interventions designed to buffer child and parent risk. Those records, however, often exist in silos, collected by discrete programs for administration and primarily focused on the client served. Breaking down those silos by linking parents and children, as well as other family or household members, makes it possible to effectively develop, coordinate, and evaluate two-generation intervention strategies. The objective of this review is to outline conceptual strategies for constructing household and family units with linked administrative records for research purposes. Specifically, this paper: (1) provides an understanding of how households and family units have historically been conceptualized in the United States and illustrate the limitations of this approach for studying complex families; (2) examines the limitations of this approach for studying contemporary families; and (3) explores strategies for organizing administrative data into household and family units for this purpose.