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Measuring International Migration to the U.S. and Limiting Disclosure Risk

Sun, August 9, 2:00 to 3:00pm, TBA

Abstract

Amid evolving concerns of disclosure risk in survey research, particularly regarding immigrants in the United States, this paper examines questions asked about international migration on the General Social Survey (GSS). While the GSS has asked the long-running question about where respondents were born since 1977, the GSS began asking a follow-up question in 2018, asking respondents how long they have lived in the United States, if they had already responded that they were born in a different country. Amid expanded NORC disclosure review policies in 2025, the GSS has limited the public release of data that may be disclosive, in order to strengthen respondents’ privacy. The follow-up question about the detailed length of stay in the U.S. by those born outside of the country (YEARSUSA) was one of these removals from the public data file. In the place of YEARSUSA in the public data file, two new variables that measure a timeframe of migration based on U.S. migration policy (MIGHIST) and age at migration (MIGAGE).
We analyze data from GSS years 2018-2024 to investigate the impact of the transition away from the potentially disclosive data of detailed length of stay in the U.S., to two newly constructed variables measuring time and age of migration. Preliminary findings show descriptive differences between the previously released migration variable with each of the newly constructed migration variables, though more research will be included in the final paper. This analysis will provide survey researchers and GSS data users with a thorough examination of potential trend shifts to evolving international migration data and implications for data quality.

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