From the online definition, I can’t tell if FAMINCOME in the ATUS is family income or household income–can you clarify which would be the better way to describe it?
This is a good question and should be clarified in the online documentation. This variable actually comes directly from the CPS and relates to the FAMINC variable. Since the variable is a household level variable, it is the same for all members of the same housing unit. However, the value of this variable relates to the “family” or those who are related to the household head.
Hi all,
I’m linking CPS data on income (variable FTOTVAL) to ATUS respondents as I’m inteested in the
continuous family/household income rather than on that expressed in ranges (variable FAMINCOME in ATUS).
My question is: Why FTOTVAL does not include all respondents declaring FAMINCOME? Looking at the months of interviews collecting FTOTVAL they run from May to November.
My impresion is that this is related to the fact that the CPS interviews are made 2-5 months before ATUS. Is this the reason?
Most importantly, is there a way to have the continuous FTOTVAL for all respondents of decalring FAMINCOME?
Thank you in advance,
Rezart
FTOTVAL is collected as part of the CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) – see the availability tab for this information. ATUS respondents who are not interviewed in March (when the ASEC is fielded) will not have any value for this variable. To have been sampled in the ASEC and linked to the ATUS, a household’s final interview month (identified in MONTH_CPS8) must be in March, April, May, or June. FAMINCOME however comes directly from the CPS variable FAMINC, which is collected in every month of the CPS. A continuous measure of total family income for ATUS respondents can therefore only be obtained for those who can be linked to their ASEC record.
You might alternatively use EARNWEEK and SPEARNWEEK to obtain a continuous measure of combined weekly earnings from jobs worked by the ATUS respondent and their spouse/unmarried partner. Note that earnings for unemployed and self-employed ATUS respondents are unavailable; they are assigned EARNWEEK = 99999.99. Similarly, unemployed and self-employed spouses are assigned SPEARNWEEK = 99999.99. If the ATUS respondent does not have a spouse, SPEARNWEEK is set at 99999.98.
You may also be able to leverage ATUS links to the CPS data to obtain weekly earnings data for other household members who are not the ATUS respondent or their spouse. If you can identify all of the members of an ATUS respondent’s household in the CPS, you can sum each member’s EARNWEEK2 value to obtain total weekly wage/salary earnings for all employed household members.
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Dear Ivan,
thank you very much the information.
Actually, I’m looking for a variable that measures as accurately as possible total wealth. Yeah, earnings could be a proxy but it misses a lot of information on other earnings types; which are quite relevant for my research.
All the best and thank you again.
Rezart