Are the maximum possible values for STAMPVAL the same as for FOODSTAMP? I haven’t been able to find information on this in neither the STAMPVAL description nor the topcoding tables.
Thanks for clarifying!
FOODSTMP identifies whether a household benefited from the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) last year, so the possible codes are 0 (NIU), 1 (No), or 2 (Yes). As outlined on the description tab for FOODSTMP, STAMPVAL is one of the three follow-up questions asked if a household responded ‘Yes’ to FOODSTMP, which asks the total face value of food stamps received last year. STAMPVAL is restricted to 5 digits going back to 2009, before which it was restricted to 4 digits, which is discussed in the comparability tab for STAMPVAL.
Thanks for looking into this @Grace_Cooper!
Just to clarify: I am interested in comparing STAMPVAL and FOODSTAMP (not FOODSTMP).
According to the documentation, both report the value of Food Stamps. However, STAMPVAL is a household variable while FOODSTAMP is a person variable so it’s not obvious if their topcodes/maximum values are comparable.
Thank you for clarifying and my apologies for the misunderstanding.
The comparability tabs for FOODSTAMP and STAMPVAL indicate that topcodes vary by year. Check the ASEC Codebooks for topcodes applied to each source variable each year. For example, based on the 2019 ASEC Codebook, STAMPVAL was created using the source variable F_MV_FS (pp.37), which has a range of values from 0 to 24,999 and FOODSTAMP was created using the source variable HFDVAL (pp.29), which has a range of values from 0 to 30,000.
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Thanks for your answer Grace!