I’m trying to figure out which variable in ACS to use for whether someone has health insurance through their employer, and would appreciate any insight into the difference between HINSEMP vs HINSEMP2.
This IPUMS USA user guide reviews the available health insurance variables. HINSEMP should be used to identify whether a person has health insurance through their or another family member’s employer, former employer, or union. Based on my initial inspection, I am not able to identify any differences between HINSEMP and HINSEMP2; I recommend using HINSEMP because it has broader sample coverage and is consistently referenced as the appropriate variable to use. I have a request out to the IPUMS USA team to revise the HINSEMP2 text to differentiate it from HINSEMP or remove it if they are indeed duplicative.
Note there is no way to definitively determine if the person had insurance directly through their employer or through another family member using IPUMS USA. However, you may be interested in the variable HIUID and HIURULE, which report health insurance units within a household (HIUID) and the rule used for identifying the health insurance unit HIURULE). This provides additional background of how coverage is determined, but is based on a set of assumptions outlined in the variable descriptions and linked documentation.
More detailed health insurance data is available through the Current Population Survey that we release on IPUMS CPS (view the entire variable group). This includes the variable GRPOWNNW, which identifies individuals who are the policyholder for current employment-based insurance.