"Years spent in the US (YRSINUS)" variable in 1998

HEALTH SURVEYS
1

I have been using an IHIS data extract (covering years from 1990 to 2007) which I retrieved last year (in April, 2016) and this data includes “YRSINUS” variable for all years including 1998.

. tab yrsinus if year==1998

Number of years spent in the |

U.S. | Freq. Percent Cum.

-------------------------------±----------------------------------

NIU | 83,858 84.89 84.89

Less than 1 year | 264 0.27 85.16

1 year to less than 5 years. | 1,961 1.99 87.14

5 years to less than 10 years | 2,562 2.59 89.74

10 years to less than 15 years | 2,055 2.08 91.82

15 years or more | 6,380 6.46 98.27

Unknown | 1,705 1.73 100.00

-------------------------------±----------------------------------

Total | 98,785 100.00

Today, I requested a new data extract for the same period and found out that “YRSINUS” is no longer avaiable for the 1998 year period. I could not find any explanation about this change but would appreciate an explanation.

I thank you for your answer in advance.

2

It looks like YRSINUS should be available in 1998 but, for some reason, is not. It is likely that the 1998 data was dropped during the most recent data release. The IPUMS Health Surveys Team will fix this issue and release the data with the new 2016 data (anticipated to be released in mid- to late-July 2017). In the meantime, I have emailed you a STATA file that you can merge to your extract.