MOOP - is this family medical out of pocket spending or individual?

Hi, in the CPS ASEC, MOOP is defined as “Medical out of pocket expenditures” and FMOOP is defined as “Total family spending on medical out of pocket costs.” However, in what’s available in IPUMS, there’s only MOOP (labeled as family medical out of pocket costs) and there’s no FMOOP. Similarly, HIPVAL is labled for family but in the CPS data dictionary, there is a differnece between FHIP-VAL and PHIP-VAL.

Could you please clarify this?

Thank you.

In IPUMS CPS MOOP and HIPVAL are both variables that refer to family payments (using the US Census family definition and including related subfamilies). At the present time, there is no individual-level medical payments variables. I can pass along your interest of these individual-level variables to the IPUMS CPS team.

Thank you. Is it family or household? In the CPS data, the FMOOP variable exists for households that are of size 1.

These variables are for Census families. For more on Census families see FTYPE and FAMREL.

It sounds like you are doing person-level analysis. If so, you should use the person-level weight variable WTSUPP.

Yes, that’s my first thought too. But isn’t the variable itself (MOOP) for families? That’s where my confusion comes from.

Yes, MOOP represents family medical payments. The choice of a weight variable, however, is driven by the level of analysis. For example, if you were aiming to total up all of the individuals with family medical payments greater than some threshold - you’d want to weight your data with person level weights. If, on the other hand, you were aiming to total up all of the households with family medical payments greater than some threshold - you’d want to weight your data with household level weights. More information on IPUMS sample weights is available here.

I hope this helps.