Register-based sampling for household panels

In the Netherlands, statistical information about income and wealth is based on two large scale household panels that are completely derived from administrative data. A problem with using households as sampling units in the sample design of panels is the instability of these units over time. Changes in the household composition affect the inclusion probabilities required for design-based and model-assisted inference procedures. Such problems are circumvented in the two aforementioned household panels by sampling persons, who are followed over time. At each period the household members of these sampled persons are included in the sample. This is equivalent to sampling with probabilities proportional to household size where households can be selected more than once but with a maximum equal to the number of household members. In this paper properties of this sample design are described and contrasted with the Generalized Weight Share method for indirect sampling (Lavallee 1995, 2007). Methods are illustrated with an application to the Dutch Regional Income Survey.