Understanding Society User Support

Hi,

I have been doing some comparisons of the gross and net income variables in the hhresp files in USoc and BHPS (from SN 6614) and I have found some discrepancies that I wanted to please ask you about. I have tried looking if others have previously asked about these but couldn’t find any answers.

So would be grateful if you could please help with:

1. For both USoc and BHPS: There are a large number of households where total net income is greater than total gross income. For USoc, there are 1,713 cases where net income (fihhmnnet1_dv) is more than 1% greater than gross income (fihhmngrs_dv). For BHPS, there are 1,106 cases where net income (hhyneti) is more than 1% greater than gross income (fihhyr). For BHPS, some of these cases are potentially explained by question 2 below. But is there a reason why net income could be larger than gross incomes, such as due to transfers?

2. BHPS only: As part of checking the above, I found as well that there are 358 cases in BHPS where the sum of gross labour and non-labour income (fihhyl + fihhynl) is more than 1% greater than total gross income. Of these, 44 are the result of topcoding but the others seem to be inconsistent against each other. Among these there are even 59 instances of 0 total income but positive non-labour income. There are also 26 cases where there is positive total gross income but both gross labour and non-labour income are 0 (all of these cases are fully imputed). So I wanted to please ask, is it correct that in BHPS, fihhyr should equal fihhyl + fihhynl? And if yes, would it please be possible to check these cases and advise how to treat them?

3. BHPS only: I have also done a comparison of the net income data now included in BHPS against what was published by Jenkins and colleagues on the UK Data Service in SN 3909. From this, I have found that there are 18,682 cases where Jenkins hhyneti data was missing but positive hhyneti values are available in the new BHPS data and that these are broadly equally spread across waves. There are also 103 cases where there are positive values for both but that these differ. This compares to a total of 128,371 positive hhyneti values in the new BHPS. Would it please be possible to explain if there is a reason for why these additional values are now available and whether it is okay to use them? I have found the the 8th edition BHPS user guide where the addition of this data to BHPS was made but there are no detailed explanations around it (see appendix 4 of: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/bhps/documentation/pdf_versions/volumes/5151userguide_vola.pdf). All the gross income data for these additional cases look okay though so presume that it should be fine.

4. BHPS only: In relation to point 3 above, there are 174 cases where gross income (fihhyr) is a positive value but net income (hhyneti) is assigned a missing value. Would it please be possible to check these?

5. BHPS only: It seems that in SN 6614, the BHPS gross income data are topcoded, while the net income data are not. I just wanted to check if that was intended?

There’s quite a bit here so I understand if it may take a while to respond!

Thank you very much in advance,

Marek