February 21, 2011: Staff from the Minnesota Population Center (MPC) presented to SHADAC last week about their work with family interrelationship variables, which are recoded variables that allow data users to identify relationships among spouses, parents, and children without requiring the use of multiple variables and complicated logic. These variables are already available for the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS)—for both the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the American Community Survey (ACS)—and will soon be available for the Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS). MPC’s Sarah Flood provided SHADAC staff with a demonstration of how these variables work with the CPS. As an example of how this might apply for state analysts, the mother or father’s relationship to the child might help to identify eligibility for public programs.
To learn more about these CPS variables, click here.