I am currently trying to produce estimates of offer rates and eligibility rates for employer-sponsored health insurance by occupation. I am using the IPUMS CPS data and have been focusing on HIOFFER (offered by employer) and HIELIG (eligible if offered) variables. I am getting stuck on truly understanding who is considered NIU for HIOFFER, and the IPUMS documentation has not cleared it up unfortunately. I’ve been able to confirm in the data that HIELIG is only asked if employer-sponsored health insurance is offered (HIOFFER == 2). However, there are many people who are employed but are considered not in the universe (NIU) for HIOFFER. There are also people covered and not covered by employer-sponsored health insurance who are NIU for HIOFFER.
I was wondering if anyone could shed light on the NIU for HIOFFER, beyond what’s in the documentation.
It matters because offer rates are quite high if you omit the HIOFFER NIU observations. However, they’re much lower if you do consider employed people NIU for HIOFFER in offer rates. Thank you!
The current universe statement for HIOFFER reads “Respondents who were not covered by employer-based health insurance plans who are employed and not self-employed.” Stated differently, this includes anyone currently employed (excluding self-employed) who is not the policyholder of any current employment-based health insurance coverage. Therefore, anyone who is the policyholder for coverage will be not-in-universe for HIOFFER. I see how the current universe statement for this variable can be confusing and will consult with my colleagues on how it can be better clarified.
To confirm this, I referred to the 2024 ASEC codebook documentation for the variable ESIOFFER (the variable that is recoded to create HIOFFER). The codebook describes the universe for ESIOFFER as:
(NOW_OWNGRP = 0 or 2) and (PEMLR = 1 or 2) and (PEIO1COW = 1,2,3,4,5,8,9, or 10)
I will describe each of these components.
- NOW_OWNGRP refers to this policyholder component and restricts from the universe anyone with NOW_OWNGRP = 1 (i.e., responding “yes” to being the policyholder of current employment-based coverage). You can also see this relationship by cross tabulating HIOFFER with GRPOWNLY (“Policyholder for employment-based insurance”).
- PEMLR additionally restricts the universe to currently employed persons.
- PEIO1COW cuts out self-employed persons.
Thank you, Ivan. This is incredibly helpful. Having it confirmed that HIOFFER is the recode of ESIOFFER was the key.
So, if I’m going to calculate the percent of people employed in an occupation who work for an employer that offers employer-sponsored health insurance, I would need to combine HIOFFER with GRPOWNNW, right? That’s because HIOFFER excludes people who are the policyholders of employer-sponsored health insurance, which is captured by GRPOWNNW. By occupation: I would calculate:
(HIOFFER == 2 | GRPOWNNW == 2) / (EMPSTAT IN (10, 12) & CLASSWKR NOT IN (13, 14))
And to calculate the percent of people employed in an occupation who are eligible for their company’s employer-sponsored health insurance, I would calculate:
(HIELIG == 2 | GRPOWNNW == 2) / (EMPSTAT IN (10, 12) & CLASSWKR NOT IN (13, 14))
Is my understanding correct?
Your approach to using HIOFFER together with GRPOWNNW to identify people who work for an employer that offers employer-sponsored health insurance makes sense. The policyholder of current employment-based insurance is certainly being offered employer-sponsored health insurance. One thing to be aware of is that while HIOFFER is restricted to currently employed not self-employed persons, GRPOWNNW is reported for all people regardless of employment status (see the universe tab for GRPOWNNW). You may therefore find cases where someone is unemployed or not in the labor force (or self-employed), but reports being the policyholder for employment-based insurance. Retaining these cases in the numerator will include people who do not “work for an employer.”
In calculating the percent of people employed in an occupation who are eligible for their company’s employer-sponsored health insurance, you should be aware that HIELIG is only asked of those who reported that their employer offers employment-based insurance (see the universe tab for HIELIG). In other words, their employer must offer insurance for the eligibility question to make sense. Your current denominator treats workers whose employer does not offer insurance as not being eligible for insurance. If you prefer to identify how many are eligible for insurance among those whose employers offer insurance, the numerator from your previous ratio would be a more appropriate denominator.