Identifying Households in Panel Data
I don't get it, you say you have a household ID. If it is the same across waves, then it is the same household over waves. Most likely the people who collected the data will be able to answer the question of whether this is the same household better than you.
The exact definition of who constitutes a household is necessarily arbitrary and varies to some degree between countries. However, the large surveys tend to gravitate around a definition that includes everybody who has lived in the same &quot;building&quot; (whatever that may be) and at least one meal together for more than 6 months in the last year. Then they tend to narrow this down e.g. excluding workers being paid while living there etc. You can check out a questionnaire from a large survey, for instance Living Standard Measurement Survey by the World Bank, at the beginning of the household roster they usually have a section describing who is part of the household.
Households will be given a unique id the first time they are interviewed and followed using this id over the subsequent waves (there is no kind of probability-based matching going on). To re-identify the same households, surveys will use address / GPS, name, and contact details.
In sum: There is really not much point worrying about this. Just group based on hhid and spend your time on other problems in the data (which likely there will be enough of ;))