system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How easy is it for PhD economists to get access to government administrative datasets?

I've been thinking about doing a PhD and trying to brainstorm some research topics. As someone interested primarily in public econ (and also health econ), a lot of the questions I've come up with would greatly benefit from being able to use government data (e.g. tax data, healthcare system data, education admin data).

When I read economics papers in top journals, it seems like these economists are, at least sometimes, able to access great individual-level government datasets for research. 

I'm wondering - how easy is this to do if you're a PhD student or if you're a professor? Do you need to have connections within the government or can you just request access to that data?

Also, does this vary by jurisdiction at all (e.g. US vs. Canada vs. Western Europe vs. developing world)?
gpt
Depends. Tax data is impossible for a PhD student to get in the US, although social security datasets from other countries are occasionally available with a lot of effort and advisor clout.

Education data is achievable, although generally you would get it at the state or county level, and usually in the state(s) that historically play ball with researchers.

Health data in the US is quite hard depending on what you want. Medicare used to be very accessible if you knew someone at NBER but is now all but impossible for phd students to get. Other admin datasets are expensive.

In general, all of these things require some combination of connections, effort, and luck.