ASEC Health Insurance (Summary) Variables

CPS
1

Hi CPS team!

The SHADAC summary health insurance variables span from 1988 - 2013, largely because of re-designs in the survey before and after these years. However, one of the variables – HINSEMP – is only introduced in the 1996 survey. Presumably, this would be because of the redesign in 1996 which includes the variablee GRPOWNLY. However, this variable seems to have identical responses to INCLUGH once you restrict the universe to those employed in the last year, and this variable goes back to 1988 and even earlier.

Is there any other reason the SHADAC imputation procedure (with VERIFY) and the other changes cannot be applied to employer-sponsored health insurance for 1988 - 1995?

Thank you!!

2

I am following up with our partners at SHADAC who create these variables, to see if I can get more detailed information about the construction of HINSEMP.

3

Thanks for your patience while we looked into this question. HINSEMP is created by our partners at SHADAC using information about other insurance coverage in addition to the explicit measure for employer-provided insurance (e.g., GRPOWNLY or INCLUGH). As far as I can tell, these other coverage sources are not available prior to 1996.