# Identifying children AND dependents

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/identifying-children-and-dependents/4484>\
**Category:** CPS\
**Created:** [January 30, 2022, 8:34pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/identifying-children-and-dependents/4484 "2022-01-30T20:34:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Samantha\_Sloate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7bcc69/32.png) [@Samantha\_Sloate](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Samantha_Sloate)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2022, 8:34pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/identifying-children-and-dependents/4484/1 "2022-01-30T20:34:50Z")

</div>

Hello! I’m working to impute child and dependent care tax deduction information. To do this, I need to select a universe of CPS respondents who theoretically could be eligible for child and dependent care tax credits. I can use YNGCH for a respondent’s own children, but is there a way to determine whether respondents may be caring for dependents who are NOT their own children? Thank you.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ivan\_Strahof](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/ivan_strahof/32/626_2.png) [@Ivan\_Strahof](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Ivan_Strahof)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2022, 5:07pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/identifying-children-and-dependents/4484/2 "2022-02-08T17:07:01Z")

</div>

While IPUMS doesn’t have variables that reveal who claims whom as a dependent, IPUMS does have an extensive number of [family interrelationship variables](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/group/core_fam) whose construction is further detailed in [this user guide](https://cps.ipums.org/cps/new_pointers.shtml). For your purposes, [PELNMOM](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/PELNMOM#codes_section) and [PELNDAD](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/PELNDAD#codes_section) (2007-2019), or [PELNPAR1](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/PELNPAR1#codes_section) and [PELNPAR2](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/PELNPAR2#codes_section) (since 2019), would likely be most helpful. These provide the self-reported person number of the respondent’s parents if they are living together in the same household. It includes biological, step, and adoptive parents. Those relationships are further distinguished in [PEPAR1TYP](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/PEPAR1TYP#codes_section) and [PEPAR2TYP](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/PEPAR2TYP#codes_section). These variables, combined with [AGE](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/AGE#codes_section), will hopefully give you a sense of which households are likely to have dependents and who is most likely to claim them. There may also be cases where no parents are reported in the household. For such cases, you may need to use the variable [RELATE](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/RELATE#codes_section), which provides the respondent’s relationship to the household head, in order to dig deeper into household relationships.

If you do plan to use pre-2007 data, [MOMLOC](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/MOMLOC#codes_section) and [POPLOC](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/POPLOC#codes_section) will give you the IPUMS constructed interfamily relationships for the respondent’s mother and father. We recommend for consistency to use either only self-reported relationships mentioned in the first paragraph or these IPUMS generated variables.