Experimental Poverty Measures, 2001: Public-Use Dataset Notes

These are notes for analysts using the Public-Use SAS dataset or
ASCII dataset associated with the US Census Bureau 1990-2001 data 
update  to the P60-205 report on Experimental Poverty Measures, 
1990-1997. 

There are three files available at the Census ftp site: 

1.	povpu01.sas7bdat    
2.	pov01in.sas
3.	pov01in.lst

These files can be accessed via ftp at the following census web site:  
http://ftp.census.gov/housing/povmeas/pov01/

The SAS dataset, povpu01.sas7bdat was created using PC-SAS version 8. 
Contained in the SAS datasets are variables used to construct the 
13 experimental poverty measures. Also included are variables 
necessary to replicate the cross-tabulations between  
experimental poverty measures and population characteristics 
displayed in that report. For details on the construction  of 
the 13 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 2002 March CPS Public-Use 
file from which the dataset was created.

The SAS file pov01in.sas, reads in the SAS dataset, and, for 
illustrative purposes, also displays the final SAS data steps 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 2001 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 pov01in.lst. Users can check their numbers with those in this 
output file.