Can anybdody give me a more detailed explanation of what is included into the variable? I am a bit puzzled by the very highvalues (not only in 2015, in general). I know it is before taxes, but I really find it hard to reconcile with data, for instance, on disposable income.
Thanks!
It sounds like you are including the INCWAGE N/A code of 999999. These values represent people who were not in the question universe for INCWAGE. If you exclude values of 999999 from your calculation, or limit your data to people who are 16 and older (the 2015 INCWAGE question universe), you should get values that look closer to published figures (though we do not expect to exactly match published figures with sample microdata). For the 2015 1-year ACS file I get a weighted average INCWAGE value of 27,962.58 for people 16+.
I hope this helps!
Hi Grover,
I know I am 6 years late, hoping you’re still working there. I have some variables denoted as 000000, some as 999999 and some as N/A. These are skewing my data, are these all N/A?
The variable INCWAGE reports each respondent’s total pre-tax wage and salary income - that is, money received as an employee - for the previous year. in the codes section of the variable, you can see special codes, including N/A and missing codes, as well as top codes. The code 999999 is an N/A code, and the code 999998 is a missing code. An N/A code indicates the respondent is not in the universe of the variable, that is, they were not eligible to be asked the corresponding survey question. A missing code indicates the response is missing. Zero values indicate the in-universe respondent had zero wage and salary income.