computing std errors using replicate weights in an ACS2016 extract.

USA
1

I am computing std errors using replicate weights for an ACS2016 extract using R. I noted that the PERWT sum to what I assume is the population total. However the sum of each replicate weight columns does not sum to anything even close. When I compute a statistic like population total, or even for a subpopulation (say male or female) the total using PERWT seems correct. However using each of REPWTPn gives an answer that is orders of magnitude smaller. For example the PERWT for my extract sum to 330799752. RPLWTP1 sums to 2232926. If I’m looking at say an estimate of population totals for women I will get vastly different extimates, When I take the squared differences I get a very large number that is certainly not correct. Am I missing something here?

Thanks.

Anne

2

It sounds like there may be an issue in how the replicate weights are being specified in R. Note that, at the current time, IPUMS USA does not have support documentation on the use of replicate weights in R. We do have documentation for using replicate weights in Stata (see here). While this documentation my be helpful, it unfortunately does not provide specific instructions for R. We hope to have more documentation for the use of IPUMS data in R in the future.