NCHILD person-level or household-level?

1

Hi,

I was hoping to confirm something. I’m using your NCHILD variable to isolate women with and without children for a flows analysis. When I look at the family interrelationships tab of all the variables the description for nchild is “Number of own children in household” but when you click on the variable the description is “NCHILD counts the number of own children (of any age or marital status) residing with each individual.” To me this reads as two different things? So just to confirm:

Is nchild the number of own child at the person level or the number of children at the household level?

Thanks!

2

NCHILD is a person-level variable, giving the number of the person’s own children who live within the household. This is true for both IPUMS USA and IPUMS CPS. Note if their children live outside the household, they are not included in this variable.

3

Thank you!