Comparable weights with ACS

CPS
1

Dear who may concern,

In CPS, I have been trying to find a population weight that is comparable to the “perwt” in ACS?

Suppose, I want to find the population with a Bachelor’s degree for each MSA for the year of 2004, which weight shall I use?

I did try to check the “asecwt” and the “REPWTP” in CPS; but their magnitudes look way different from ACS.

When I checked this on the CPS website; they have an instruction for this, see CPS instruction. But I could not find a similar variable with what they imply there.

Can anyone help me with this question?

Thanks,

2

The weight in the CPS-ASEC that corresponds to PERWT in the ACS is ASECWT. This is the final person-level weight. If you are using the basic monthly CPS samples, the weight would be WTFINL. There are also other weights in the CPS data that are used in specific analyses. The weights essentially tell you how many people in the population are represented by a specific person in the sample. So surveys with smaller samples will have larger weights on average. That’s why the ASEC weights are larger than the ACS weights.