POINTER DATA ITEMS ADDED TO THE INTEGRATED
PUBLIC USE CENSUS AND AMERICAN COMMUNITY
SURVEY: 1850 TO 2007 BY AL ANDERSON
Pointer Items
June 24, 2009
See: pdq\ipacs08.pdqCustomItems
The integrated and harmonized census data files created by Steven Ruggles and his
collaborators at the Minnesota Population Center are designed to provide information
about households or about individuals. However, you sometimes wish to tabulate the
characteristics of one member of a household by the characteristics of another member of
that same household. For example, you may wish to consider young children and
tabulate them by the educational attainment of their mother if she is present in the
household. Or you may wish to tabulate the earnings or race of wives by the earnings or
race of their husbands if they have a husband in the household.
Al Anderson has created pointer data items for the following individuals who are found
in some or all households:
Father, Mother, Head, Spouse
Each of these is defined as a custom item that takes the form pointer(characteristic).
For example, mother(age) returns the age of mother if the mother of the individual is
present in the household. If not present, -1 is returned.
Example 1.
Question:
Educational Attainment of Mothers of Children
You might be interested in children under age 18 enumerated in the
2007 ACS. You might be interested in the educational attainment
of their mother if she is in their household. Furthermore, you might
wish to know whether the educational attainment of mothers differs
by race of child. The following commands in PDQ-Explore will
produce that tabulation.
Tabulation
Query Type:
Universe/Selection: year=2007 & age<18
mother(educ99)
Row:
race
Column:
(blank)
For:
Default
Weight:
Note:
Percentage by row. The row data item will be the educational
attainment of mothers of children under age 18. Not all children
live in a household with their mother. If the mother is not in the
household of the child, the code -1 is assigned to mother(educ99).
Example 2.
Question:
Interracial Marriages
Let’s consider married spouse present men aged 25 to 64 in 2007.
What percent of American Indian husbands were married to women
who were also American Indians? What percent of Black men were
married to White wives?
Tabulation
Query Type:
Universe/Selection: year=2007 & sex=1 & age>24 & age<65
race
Row:
spouse(race)
Column:
(blank)
For:
Default
Weight:
Note:
Percent by row or percent by column
Example 3.
Question:
Race of Children by Race of Household Head
What percent of American Indian children under age 18 lived in
households headed by a man or woman who was also an American
Indian?
Tabulation
Query Type:
Universe/Selection: year=2007 & age<18 & child=1
race
Row:
head(race)
Column:
(blank)
For:
Default
Weight:
Note:
Percent by row
Example 4.
Question:
Educational Attainment of Spouses
Consider men married to and living with a wife in 2007. What
percent of these men reported lower educational attainments than
their wives?
Tabulation
Query Type:
Universe/Selection: year=2007 & sex=1 & marst=1
educ99
Row:
spouse(educ99)
Column:
(blank)
For:
Default
Weight:
Note:
Percent by row or percent by column. For a more direct answer to
the question, enter educ99<spouse(edu99) for the row and clear
the column entry.
Example 5.
Question:
The Ages of Husbands and Wives
Are there many older men who are married to youg women? Or,
stated differently, are there many young women now married to
older men?
Tabulation
Query Type:
Universe/Selection: year=2007 & sex=1 & marst=1 & age>19
age/5
Row:
spouse(age/5)
Column:
(blank)
For:
Default
Weight:
Note:
Percent by row or percent by column
Example 6.
Are the earnings of wives linked to the earnings of their
husbands?
Consider married couples in which the man was ages 25 to 59 in
Question:
2007 and had reported positive earnings. Classify these men by
earnings into earnings categories $10,000 in width. Restrict the
analysis to men whose wives also reported positive earnings. How
are the average earnings of wives linked to those of their
husbands?
Summary Statistics
Query Type:
Universe/Selection: year=2007 & sex=1 & marst=1 & age>24 & age<60
& incearn>0 & spouse(incearn)>0
incearn/10000
Row:
(blank)
Column:
(blank)
For:
Default
Weight:
Spouse(incearn)
Describe
Expression:
Note:
Has this relationship changed over time? Look at earlier years.
Data Items Created by Recoding Census Data
Items and Added to the ipacs08 Custom Items file
See: pdq\ipacs08.pdqCustomItems for the available recodes
Name of Data Item
Amerind
Average_hourly_wage
Average_hourly_wage_cents
Bedrooms_needed
Black
Child
Chinese
Dependent
Econstat
Generation
Generations
Hhage
Japanese
Living_arrangements
MichPuma
Number_of_races
Parents
Race3
Race_recode
Relatives
Sufficient_bedrooms
White
Meaning
Dichotomous item identifying American Indians
Average hourly earnings in dollars & cents
Average hourly earning in cents
See data item. This indicates the number of bedrooms
needed for the household using complicated rules
Dichotomous item identifying blacks
Dichotomous item identifying children of household head
Dichotomous item identifying Chinese persons
Dichotomous item indicating a person is under age 18 or
over 64
Economic status based on Poverty
Indicates the person’s generational link to the head of
household
Indicates the number of generations present in the
household
Age of household head
Dichotomous item identifying Japanese persons
This is a code of living arrangements. See data item.
Identification of Michigan PUMAs
Number of races represented in the household
Presence of none, one or two parents in the household for
children
Race recoded into three categories: white, black and other
Race recoded into Non-Hispanic races and Hispanic
Dichotomous variable indicating whether the head of
household has any relatives living in the household
Dichotomous variable indicting whether the housing unit
contains a sufficient number of bedrooms given the age,
sex, and marital status of persons in the household
Dichotomous variable indicating white race