Hello,
I’m working a project that will look at the income differences between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Although I’d like to do this on the individual levels, there is no way to capture the response of someone who is non-heterosexual without linking them to a partner in current version of the ACS. I want to make sure that I keep the couple types separate for my analysis.
Using data from 2000-2019, I believe I have located same-sex couples by using the attach characteristics in my extract. I then did the following stata code:
keep if pernum == 1
keep if sex == sex_sp
keep if related_sp == 201 | related_sp == 1114 (captures both married and unmarried partners)
then I generated a dummy of the related_sp as sscouples because all of the same sex couples in the data have been identified. then saved this to merge.
to link opposite sex couples I’ve started doing the following:
keep if related == 201 | related == 1114
keep if sprule == 11 | sprule == 12 | sprule == 13 | sprule == 14
I’m not sure if this will yield the results that I’m hoping to have. Is this the right track? If not, what would be the correct stata commands to get there. Thank you!
Providing code review is beyond the purview of IPUMS user support. However, I can share some general feedback based on what you have shared and highlight things you might consider moving forward.
It looks like you are applying the following logic in the steps to identify same-sex couples:
- keep only the householder records
- keep householder records whose sex is the same as their spouse (as assigned by IPUMS family interrelationship variables)
- keep if the relationship reported by their IPUMS-assigned spouse is either “Spouse” or “Unmarried partner”
- create flag/dummy variable that is equal to 1 for persons in this dataset
Note that this approach creates a dataset that consists of householders only; the spouses are not included in the dataset. This may be problematic depending on what your next steps are. For example, if you wanted to use this as the same-sex dataset and try to sum income across both members of the couple you would only capture the householder’s income.
This approach also eliminates any same-sex couples who are otherwise identified by IPUMS family interrelationship variables who are not the householder and their spouse/unmarried partner (e.g., if a “sister” and “sister-in-law” are both in the household and both report being married and are the only persons who report being married in the household, the IPUMS algorithm will link them). By restricting to householders only, you reduce issues of comparability over time, but I am noting that IPUMS family interrelationship variables will identify same-sex couples in some years outside of the householder/spouse and householder/unmarried partner pairings.
Your code for identifying different-sex couples uses a different approach from how you assigned the same-sex couples; it isn’t immediately clear to me why altered the code for this group rather than replicating the code you use for the same-sex couples with modifications around sex_sp. I will note, however, that SPRULE value of 11 can include same-sex partners, so this is not excluding same-sex couples. It also looks like your current code keeps only the spouses but omits the householders with whom they are partnered from the data.
There is sample code from IPUMS USA for attaching information about a spouse or parent onto a person record (scroll towards bottom of the page I linked above for the sample code). While the code is explicitly about creating the functionality that the “attach features” aspect of the extract system creates for you, you may find these code examples helpful.