Hi,
This is my first time working with the American Community Survey. I am currently analyzing the 2023 data and want to identify unpaid caregivers. While I can identify unpaid family workers, I also want to examine unpaid caregivers who provide elderly or child care, or who engage in domestic labor at home. Is it possible to identify these people?
Thank you in advance.
Unpaid family workers (CLASSWKRD = 29) in the ACS refers to those who worked without pay in a for-profit family business or farm for 15 hours or more per week. The type of unpaid caregiving that you describe is generally not identified in the ACS. There are however several other data collections that we offer that you may find more helpful:
The American Time Use Survey data on IPUMS ATUS is perhaps the best resource we have for studying unpaid caregivers. Survey respondents provide a time diary of activities that they did in a specific day, which allows researchers to identify the amount of time respondents engaged in various forms of (informal/unpaid) childcare and eldercare. ATUS respondents can be additionally linked to their record from the Current Population Survey (CPS) for further analysis. We provide extensive resources to help familiarize users with analyzing time use data including short video tutorials and training materials with sample code among other support.
The Current Population Survey data on IPUMS CPS can be used to identify unpaid family caregivers who reported “taking care of house or family” as a reason for not being in the labor force; this involves using the variables NILFACT (major activity for those not in the labor force), WHYNWLY (reason not working last year), and ACTNLFLY (activity when not in labor force last year for part-year workers). Since the CPS microdata includes records for each household member, you may be able to infer whether the respondent who reported “taking care of house or family” engaged in childcare or eldercare by looking at the records of the other household members. Variables such as NCHLT5 (number of own children under age 5 in household) or DIFFCARE (has personal care limitation) may be helpful. This method will not capture unpaid family caregivers who also had a paid job or reported other reasons for not being in the labor force.
The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data on IPUMS MEPS identifies recipients of informal unpaid home health care in the variable HHUNPDAYS (annual total of days received home care visits from unpaid care providers).
As a side note, IPUMS will be hosting a workshop on using this type of population data for studying formal and informal caregiving at this year’s Gerontological Society of America Annual Scientific Meeting.
Thank you very much for the detailed response!