ACS Data Users Group

Hi all,

I am working with the microdata of 2020 5-year ACS data.

I am trying to calculate the percentage of people in New York city that received public assistance income in the past 12 months. So I used pap variable (a person record), conditioning on pap>0, the result is that 184,462 people in New York city received some public assistance income in the past 12 months.

However, I noticed the Census's aggregated tables report the public assistance income at household level.

I am just wondering if anyone knows how to calculate the percentage of household that received public assistance income in the past 12 months with microdata based pap variable which is a person record.

Thank you very much.

The way I would do this is by using the person-level data and creating a new variable. Define that new variable as 1 or 0 for receiving PAP. Then sum on the serialno variable. This will give you household level data. If the sum of the new variable is equal to or greater than 1 then the household receives PAP.