ASECWTCVD is a 10-digit numeric variable with a floating decimal point.

Description

ASECWTCVD is a person-level weight that should be used in analyses of individual-level ASEC data to account for nonrandom nonresponse during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In their working paper Coronavirus Infects Surveys Too: Survey Nonresponse Bias and the Coronavirus Pandemic, Jonathan Rothbaum and Adam Bee demonstrated that survey nonresponse was larger and more strongly associated with income in the 2020 ASEC than in previous years. As a result, 2020 income estimates are biased upward when using the existing survey weights. Using information from administrative records available for nonresponding as well as responding households, Rothbaum and Bee generate entropy balance weights to account for this nonrandom nonresponse. These weights are offered through IPUMS CPS in the variable ASECWTCVD. For more information on how this weight was generated, see Rothbaum and Bee, 2021.

ASECWTCVD is available from 2019-2021; we hope to incorporate this data from 2017 and 2018 in the future. ASECWT should be used for all other ASEC years. In other years, researchers should use WTFINL rather than ASECWT when they wish to conduct person-level analyses of non-ASEC data. EARNWT should be used for any analysis including a small number of person-level variables (EARNWEEK, HOURWAGE, PAIDHOUR, and UNION). Researchers should use ASECWTH for household-level analyses.

Comparability

ASECWTCVD is comparable in all available years.

Universe

Flags

Unharmonized Variables