DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE MARCH 1997 AND MARCH 1998 ANNUAL DEMOGRAPHIC FILES

1. Item Description Change: The item PEINUSYR (location 731 on the person's record) has a revised description of value = 14. This value stands for 1994-1995. It also has a new value. Value 15 stands for 1996-1998.

2. New (Revised) Items: A new recode, IHSFLG, found in column 836 of the person record, provides data on Indian Health Services coverage from all possible source items.

The item MCAID=yes no longer includes individuals covered by the Indian Health Service. You must use the new IHSFLG recode with MCAID to be equivalent previous years MCAID.

Item HUNITS, column 9 of the household record, is now an edited field. An allocation flag, I-HUNITS in column 354 of the household record, was added to reflect any allocation.

Additionally, there were a number of revisions made in the topcoding of various income fields. See the next sections.

3. Revised Topcodes: As was the case in previous years, the four basic earnings items were subject to topcoding again this year. The same topcodes as used in 1997 were used again (see the chart #1 below). We also replaced all topcoded values with the average amount across all topcoded records. Chart #2 below provides these average amounts for the 12 socioeconomic cells within which we computed these averages. Cells with a ---- did not have any topcoded records. Cells with an * did not contain least 5 topcoded records and were collapsed together.

Chart #1
Topcode Amounts for Earnings Fields

  Field          Topcode
ERN-VAL         $150,000
WS-VAL            25,000
SE-VAL            40,000
FRM-VAL           25,000

Chart #2
Average (Replacement) Values for Earnings Fields

   Cell           ERN-VAL         WS-VAL         SE-VAL         FRM-VAL
M,NBH,FTYR       $330,659        $61,345       $101,769         $90,170
M,NBH,OTH         330,095         88,513        104,335*         92,601*
M,B,FTYR          204,325         51,707           ----            ----
M,B,OTH           267,659*        40,732        104,335*           ----
M,H,FTYR          309,950         39,943        104,335*           ----
M,H,OTH           267,659*        47,530*          ----            ----
F,NBH,FTYR        306,468         48,755         54,484          61,127
F,NBH,OTH         442,040         39,353        104,335*         92,601*
F,B,FTYR          267,659*        47,530*          ----            ----
F,B,OTH              ----         47,530*       104,335*           ----
F,H,FTYR          394,555         35,080           ----            ----
F,H,OTH           267,659*        47,530*          ----          92,601*

1/  Cell Definition:  (Key)
         Column 1:    Sex:
                      M=Male
                      F= Female
         Column 2:    Race/Origin:
                      NBH=Not Black, Not Hispanic
                      B=Black
                      H=Hispanic
         Column 3:    Work Experience:
                      FTYR=Full Year (50+ weeks), Full Time (35+ hours per week)
                      OTR=Not Full Year, Full Time

4. Reason for Moving--Data Not on the File:The CPS collected information on an individual's reason for moving for the first time this year. Unfortunately, the processing of these data was not completed prior to release of the public use file. We will place the data on the internet in the March 1998 data set within FERRET (Go to www.bls.census.gov to access this system). Also an extract file containing these data along with appropriate match keys will be available by the end of October. Contact Bonnie Tarsia at (301) 457-3806 to obtain a copy of this extract file.

Annual Demographic Survey (March CPS Supplement) 1998 Public Use File Page

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