A New Hope – Integrated Information from Registers As a Chance for Policy Makers and Scientists in Poland.

The use of administrative data in social research, including the mobility and stratification research, has many benefits. It allows inquires of entire populations. Continuous data collection creates an opportunity for longitudinal analysis which is not affected by problems typical for surveys such as respondents’ unreliable memory or unwillingness to disclose information. It reduces the cost of research.

The use of administrative records for research purposes has decades-long tradition in Scandinavian countries but was not common around the world. Lately, thanks to developments in information technology as well as the demand for evidence-based policy making, ever more countries decide to use their administrative registers for research. Poland is one of those countries.

We present the design of the Polish Integrated Analytic Platform (Zintegrowana Platforma Analityczna) currently developed by the Ministry of Digital Affairs in cooperation with the University of Warsaw and Warsaw School of Economics. The system incorporates data from following public registers: population registers, educational databases, health records as well as tax and social security registers. The system is created with policy evaluation in mind, including among others testing the efficiency of labour market interventions or assessing the allocation of health funding. However, the data will be accessible to research as well. The system has a tremendous potential for mobility and stratification studies.

As a demonstration, we present a longitudinal analysis of tertiary education graduates’ job market outcomes (employability, wages, job stability) – controlled for socio-demographic characteristics (sex, age, average wages in region of residence etc.). Moreover, we show the impact of previous job experiences on different patterns of educational mobility between Bachelor and Master studies. The analysis uses the data of the Polish Graduate Tracking System (ELA), which constitutes the foundation for the larger national system for administrative data processing.