Description

For all persons, INCOTH reports the total income they received from other sources not already discussed in the interview. Using the reported income information, annual income amounts were then edited and imputed for every record on the full-year file. Please refer to the IPUMS user note on Income Data in MEPS for more information on the collection, editing (including top- and bottom-coding), and imputation of income variables in MEPS, as well as changes to the target population for income data collection over time. Users may also be interested in the data quality flag, QINCOTH, which reports the editing methods used for INCOTH.

The survey question about other income sources was asked a family-style question, where the family respondent is asked if anyone in the family received income from some other source. If respondents needed more information about what types of income to report as other source of income, they were shown an interview card that listed some of the different income sources that MEPS specifically collected information about in the interview as examples of income sources.

INCOTH is an 8-digit numeric variable with 2 implied decimals. That is, values of 01234567 should be interpreted as 12345.67. The command files delivered with IPUMS extracts automatically divide INCOTH by 100, so no further adjustment is needed.

999999.96: Not in Universe
999999.97: Unknown-refused
999999.98: Unknown-not ascertained
999999.99: Unknown-don't know

Comparability

For more information on how income data were collected by MEPS and changes to the imputation methods for these questions over time, please see the IPUMS user note on Income Data in MEPS.

Beginning to 1999, persons could only report income in full dollar amounts. Prior to 1999, persons could report income in dollars and cents.

Universe

Availability

• 1996-2021

Weights

• 1996-2021 : PERWEIGHT

Flags