# Family weight in CPS

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/family-weight-in-cps/2549>\
**Category:** CPS\
**Created:** [September 10, 2018, 6:04pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/family-weight-in-cps/2549 "2018-09-10T18:04:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rryberg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ccd318/32.png) [@rryberg](https://forum.ipums.org/u/rryberg)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2018, 6:04pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/family-weight-in-cps/2549/1 "2018-09-10T18:04:00Z")

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I am trying to calculate the national number families with children in poverty for 2016. I want to use CPS because it has a family weight (in addition to the household weight), according to what I read online. However, I can’t find the family weight in the dataset. Is it not available? If it is available, can it be used with the ASEC supplement?

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**Author:** ![Michelle\_Pratt](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/michelle_pratt/32/194_2.png) [@Michelle\_Pratt](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Michelle_Pratt)\
**Post date:** [September 17, 2018, 5:06pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/family-weight-in-cps/2549/2 "2018-09-17T17:06:00Z")

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While the family weight is not available as its own variable in IPUMS CPS, you could construct the appropriate family weight by assigning the ASECWT of the first person in every family to the family weight. Using just the 2016 ASEC data, you could use the following code to accomplish this:

bysort serial famid (pernum): gen fpernum=\_n  
gen famwt=asecwt if fpernum==1