Codes

This variable is not available for any of the currently selected samples.

Description

WHOELSGH specifies what persons, besides the policyholder, were covered by employment-based health insurance during the previous calendar year. The information is included on the record of the policyholder. The CPS interviewer asked, "Other than (the policyholder/name), who else in this household was covered by this [employer group health insurance] plan?" The Census Bureau coded the information into five categories: "NIU"; "Spouse also covered"; "Children also covered"; "Spouse and children also covered"; "No one else covered"; "Other combinations."

Information collected in the WHOELSGH variable was used by the Census Bureau to allocate employment-based health insurance coverage to co-resident dependents, including children, in the COVERGH variable. If researchers are interested in who had insurance coverage of a particular type, they may find the HIGROUP variable easiest to use; if they are interested in the scope of employment-based insurance as a job benefit, they may wish to analyze the data in WHOELSGH.

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 over time.

For 1988-1994, CPS interviewers asked whether any member of the household age 15 and older was covered by a "private health insurance plan," a category which included both employment-based and privately-purchased insurance (but not government insurance programs). Subsequent questions elicited information about whether such private insurance was in the respondent's own name, whether the private insurance was employment-based, and, for those individuals who reported such insurance in their own names, who else was covered by the insurance plan. This final information overlaps with the data in WHOELSGH but is not entirely comparable with WHOELSGH. First, the persons receiving insurance as dependents could have been covered by either employment-based or privately-purchased insurance. Second, information was collected separately on dependent coverage for both co-resident children and children living outside the household, as well as on coverage for a spouse, others, or the policyholder only. Finally, the responses were coded into separate variables: PHISELF (coverage for the policyholder only); PHISPOUS (coverage for the policyholder's spouse); PHIHHKID (coverage for children in the household); PHINHKID (coverage for children outside the household); and PHIOTHR (coverage for others).

Beginning in 1996, CPS interviewers asked respondents to specify whether they had coverage from employment-based health insurance as a policyholder (in the GROUPOWN; now GRPOWNLY variable) or as a dependent (in the GROUPDEP variable; now ). GROUPDEP is the closest equivalent to the WHOELSGH variable. GROUPDEP is coded as "yes" on the record of the person receiving employment-based coverage as a dependent; WHOELSGH provides information about dependents receiving employment-based coverage on the record of the policyholder for such insurance.

Universe

Flags

Unharmonized Variables

• UH_GHWHO_A1