CES Technical Notes (Restricted Access)
(W/ J. David Brown)
This technical note documents the creation of a person-country roster using 2020 address information from the IRS’s 1040 tax returns and the SSA’s Master Beneficiary Records. The roster provides the most comprehensive snapshot available of U.S. persons who are residing abroad or have dual residency in the U.S. and another country. We first describe the inputs and process to assign each administrative record a country of residence. Key demographic and address characteristics of persons with a foreign address are documented. We test the validity of inferring foreign residence from a foreign address by measuring the share of persons with a foreign address are found in the 2020 Census, which we assume to be strong evidence that a person is a U.S. resident on Census Day. The note concludes with a discussion of the current limitations of the person-country roster and recommendations to improve the roster going forward.