Annual Demographic Survey (March CPS Supplement) 1995 Data Page
The March 1995 CPS questionnaire utilized a somewhat more detailed set of health insurance questions that were designed to take better advantage of computer-assisted interviewing. Since the questions were revised, caution should be used in making comparisons between March 1994 and March 1995 health insurance estimates. For the purpose of this file, the health insurance items were recoded to their equivalent fields based on the set of questions that had previously been used. At a later time, the full set of new health insurance fields will be released.
Though the new questions did not appear to have a noticeable effect on overall health insurance estimates (neither the number nor the rate of persons without health insurance was different from last year), the new questions did appear to have an effect on individual types of coverage. For example the number of persons with military health care increased as a result of the fact that the field used to define this coverage (CHAMP) also contains persons with "miscellaneous" government insurance. In addition, the number of persons with employer-provided coverage, based on either their own coverage or that of a dependent (COV-GH) is also larger than last year, probably the result of a more straightforward set of questions about this type of coverage (we now ask separate questions about employer and other types of private health insurance plans, whereas previously we asked about employer coverage as a subset of private coverage).
A couple of other differences should be noted: 1) the children's health insurance fields (CH-HI and CH-MC) are now consistent with the other health insurance recodes that cover both adults and children (COV-HI and MCAID), and 2) given the new questionnaire, it is possible for a small number of persons covered by their own employer plan not to be asked whether their employer paid all, part, or none of the cost of that plan (if this coverage was reported in the new questions as "other" health insurance). Thus, the number of persons with an entry in HIPAID is slightly less than the number of persons with a "1" in HIEMP. In addition, the field HIPAID has only two values this year. A "1" means that the employer paid all or some of the cost of the plan and a "2" means that the employer paid none of the cost of the plan.
October 1995
Annual Demographic Survey (March CPS Supplement) 1995 Data Page
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