# SPMu\_wNewHead variable in CPS IPUMS?

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/spmu-wnewhead-variable-in-cps-ipums/3077>\
**Category:** CPS\
**Created:** [July 8, 2019, 7:29pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/spmu-wnewhead-variable-in-cps-ipums/3077 "2019-07-08T19:29:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Leanne\_Giordono](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@Leanne\_Giordono](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Leanne_Giordono)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2019, 7:29pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/spmu-wnewhead-variable-in-cps-ipums/3077/1 "2019-07-08T19:29:38Z")

</div>

Hi – do you know if there is a variable indicating the household head for new SPM units? The Census uses SPMu\_wNewHead as the flag, but I haven’t been able to find something similar in CPS IPUMS, even though there appear to be some new SPM units without a household head assigned. thanks! Leanne

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Matthew\_Bombyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Matthew\_Bombyk](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Matthew_Bombyk)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2019, 9:15pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/spmu-wnewhead-variable-in-cps-ipums/3077/2 "2019-07-09T21:15:43Z")

</div>

Currently IPUMS CPS does not include any version of this variable. If this is important for your analysis, you can use the variable from the original PUMS files available from the Census Bureau or NBER. You can merge this with your IPUMS CPS dataset using one of the methods explained in [this blog post](http://blog.popdata.org/mergecpsfile/).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Leanne\_Giordono](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@Leanne\_Giordono](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Leanne_Giordono)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2019, 9:22pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/spmu-wnewhead-variable-in-cps-ipums/3077/3 "2019-07-09T21:22:53Z")

</div>

Very good – thanks!

Leanne