I am trying to calculate seniors (AGE >= 60) whom have NOT reported income using the CPS December 2021 Food Security Supplement data. The only poverty related variable in the data set is “HRPOOR” where a value of 2 indicates incomes above 185% of the federal poverty threshold AND those who did not report income.
The challenge is trying to subset this further to actually calculate those who did not report income. Any guidance / help on this would greatly appreciated!
I’m unsure based on your question whether you are asking about respondents who reported no income (i.e. reported $0) or those who did not report income (i.e. response left blank). HRPOOR is a recode of HEFAMINC (harmonized in IPUMS CPS as FAMINC) where a code of 2 indicates respondents reporting income “above 185% poverty or income not reported” (i.e. response left blank). Additionally, these variables report the combined incomes of all family members, not just the individual senior’s income. If this is not an issue for your analysis, then you can use FAMINC and its allocation flag QFAMINC to identify respondents who did not provide information regarding family income. While all blank cases of FAMINC are allocated (FAMINC = 999 are households that were not interviewed), QFAMINC = 5 (“Blank to allocated value”) and QFAMINC = 8 (“Blank to longitudinal value”) can be used to find respondent households that left family income blank.
If instead you’re asking about respondents who report earning $0, then you will need to use other variables to determine this. Since the vast majority of seniors will be earning some income in the form of Social Security, you might be interested in identifying seniors who do not earn any wage or salary income. In this case, you can use EMPSTAT to identify seniors who are either unemployed or not in the labor force as earning no wage/salary income. Finally, detailed income questions are asked of respondents in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the CPS every March. These include INCWAGE (total wage/salary income), INCSS (social security income), INCRETIR (retirement income), and other forms of income. About 25% of respondents to the December 2021 Food Security Supplement can be linked to their responses in the March 2022 ASEC. More information about linking CPS respondents is available on the IPUMS linking user guide.