Experimental Poverty Measures, 1999: Public-Use Dataset Notes

These are notes for analysts using the Public-Use SAS dataset or
ASCII dataset associated with the US Census Bureau 1990-1999 data 
update  to the P60-205 report on Experimental Poverty Measures, 
1990-1997. 

There are five files available at the Census ftp site: 
1. povpu99.ssd01  2. povpu99.sd2  3. povpu99.txt  4. pov99in.sas
and 5. pov99in.lst
These files can be accessed via ftp at following census web site:  
http://ftp.census.gov/housing/povmeas/pov99/

The SAS dataset, povpu99.ssd01 was created using SAS in UNIX. Also 
available is povpu99.sd2, a PC-SAS version of the dataset. Contained 
in the SAS datasets are variables used to construct many of the 
marginal and experimental poverty measures contained in the P60-205 
report, but now updated to 1999. Also included are variables 
necessary to replicate the cross-tabulations between marginal and 
experimental poverty measures and population characteristics 
displayed in that report. Note that because the new 1999 Consumer 
Expenditure Survey (CES) thresholds are not available, the 
experimental poverty measures included in this dataset (npoor13-
npoor24) are based on 1997 CES thresholds updated to 1999 using the 
Consumer Price Index (CPI). For details on the construction  of 
these measures and their component elements, please refer to the 
P60 report itself and Appendix C of the report.

All variables in the public use SAS datasets have variable labels, 
and, where appropriate, value labels. Household, family, and person-
level id variables are also contained in the dataset to allow 
analysts to re-merge the file with the 2000 March CPS Public-Use 
file from which the dataset was created.

Povpu99.txt is a space-delimited ASCII version of the file. The SAS 
file pov99in.sas, also provided, reads in the ASCII file, and, for 
illustrative purposes, also displays the final SAS datasteps used to 
create the experimental poverty measures already contained in the
datasets. These steps are shown to help analysts replicate the 
experimental poverty measures and to provide guidance for those who 
wish to appropriately recombine various elements (i.e., thresholds 
and income definitions) to view alternative poverty measures.

It is important to note that many of the poverty rates generated using 
this public-use SAS dataset differ slightly from those contained in 
the 1999 update to the P60 report. This is due to the fact that some 
public-use variables (such as income and taxes) are top-coded, and 
some values for the geographic variables used to construct geographic 
adjustments are suppressed. For these reasons, poverty rates produced 
using the public use dataset are also available at this site in the 
file pov99in.lst. Users can check their numbers with those in this 
output file. Finally, users should note that the only difference between
the variables in the SAS data files and the ASCII file is that the 
weighting variable, marsupwt, is in 1000s in the SAS data files.