Description

OUT indicates whether, during the previous calendar year, the respondent had health insurance provided by the policy of someone living outside the household. The interviewer asked whether anyone in the household was covered by the health plan of someone who did not live in that household, and, if "Yes," who had such coverage.

Through programming in IPUMS-CPS, other cases were added to the pool of positive responses for OUT. Such additions were made when the respondent mentioned having coverage from the policy of someone outside the household, when answering a catchall summary question on "other" health insurance plans that followed questions about many specific types of insurance coverage.

Comparability

User Note: For a set of variables that addresses many of the comparability issues in the CPS health insurance measures, see the summary health insurance variables created by the University of Minnesota's State Health Access Data Assistance Center.

This variable is comparable for the period from 1996 through 2000.

Beginning with the ASEC 2001 survey, the CPS added a verification question (see VERIFY) to ascertain whether respondents who did not acknowledge health insurance coverage of various types in previous questions actually lacked insurance coverage during the preceding calendar year. Persons who acknowledged health insurance coverage in this verification follow-up question were asked about the types of coverage they had. In IPUMS-CPS, for the ASEC 2001 survey onward, persons who reported that they had coverage through someone outside the household were added, through programming, to the pool of positive responses for the OUT variable. For consistency in results before and after the ASEC 2001 survey, researchers should exclude cases of OUT coverage only identified via the verification question (i.e., exclude cases coded as "Yes" (2) in VERIFY when analyzing the OUT data).

Universe

Flags

Unharmonized Variables

• UH_OUT_A1