I am trying to assess food security among veterans using CPS. I see the veteran variable within ASEC and the food security variables within the Household Food Security Supplement. I am not sure how to merge these two variables in one extract to study food security among veterans (when I try adding them to the same data extract, the food security variables are missing). Could someone help point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.
It is possible to create an extract with both veteran status variables from the March ASEC and variables from the Household Food Security Supplement in December. However, due to the rotating nature of the CPS, only about 25% of the sample from the December supplement will appear in the subsequent ASEC supplement. RoPES can be a helpful tool for identifying the sample size of potential merges between multiple months of the CPS. Cohorts that only appear in one of the two samples will have missing/null values in place of the variables that were asked in the sample they didn’t appear in. For this reason, you might be interested in using a basic version of veteran status (VETSTAT) that is available for all months. If you do decide to continue with merging the December supplement with the ASEC, keep in mind that you will need to use CPSIDP as a key to link individuals between the two sets. Please check the linking the CPS page for more information on this process.