Understanding Society User Support

Hi,

Firstly thanks so much for this response, very helpful. Sorry to bring this up again but I've been doing some checks and the buno_dv variable isn't behaving in the way I thought it would, so wanted to clarify with you / the income team.

My understanding from surveys like the Family Resources Survey is benefit unit should strictly consist of up to two spouses/co-habiting couples plus their dependent children. Therefore the number of people in the benefit unit reporting earnings should almost always be a maximum of 2. I guess a small exception would be cases where e.g. a 16-year-old reports a small amount of income, or where children remain dependent when older, though I think in case of e.g. FRS even then you usually if not always get up to two earnings sources.

I've been using 'R' rather than Stata to replicate your income team's suggestion (see code below FYI), and I am coming up with many cases where more than 2 respondents within each benefit unit report earnings. When I check this in a more granular way, by converting it to a 'wide' format (see bottommost syntax), I can see lots of benefit units have people of various ages reporting income, so not just e.g. 16 year-olds plus their parents.

It's obviously fine if 'buno_dv' doesn't mean the same thing in USoc, but I just wanted to clarify, in case I'm doing something wrong here? At the moment the only workaround I have seems to involve using person number and spouse number (w_pno, w_sppno) to link the couples' earnings that way.

Best wishes,

Tom

• Create a unique variable combining pidp, hidp, buno, wave (useful for comparison/merging later):
  Dat$variables$Comb_hidpbunowave <- paste(Dat$variables$hidp, Dat$variables$buno_dv, Dat$variables$wave, sep = "0") |> as.numeric()

• Create 'long' format data combining benefit unit income:
  BUMergeDat <- Dat$variables |> #* This temporarily takes variables outside of all-waves survey design object I've created ('Dat')
  group_by(hidp, buno_dv, wave) |> #* Grouping variables (note 'wave' is a variable I created that is simply the wave number)
  mutate(
  BU_fimnlabgrs_dv_adj_nominus = sum(fimnlabgrs_dv_adj_nominus), #* BU earnings (adjusted by me to convert minus earnings to 0);
  BU_n_adults = sum(DV_Age_All_Num >= 16, na.rm = TRUE), #* Number of adults in benefit unit.
  BU_n_adults_with_earnings = sum((fimnlabgrs_dv_adj_nominus == 0)) #* Number of adults reporting earnings in benefit unit.
  ) |>
  slice(1) |>
  ungroup() |>
  select(pidp, hidp, buno_dv, wave, Comb_hidpbunowave,
  fimnlabgrs_dv_adj_nominus, BU_fimnlabgrs_dv_adj_nominus,
  ncouple_dv_adj, BU_n_adults, BU_n_adults_with_earnings) #* Select specific variables to remain in the dataframe.
  sum(duplicated(BUMergeDat$Comb_hidpbunowave)) #* Check for sum of duplicated values; should be zero.

• To check, create wider version of Dat which also shows age, individual earnings, e.t.c.:
  Dat_Wider_Filter <- Dat$variables |> select(hidp, buno_dv, wave, ndepchl_dv, age_dv, fimnlabgrs_dv_adj_nominus)
  Dat_Wider <- Dat_Wider_Filter |> group_by(hidp, buno_dv, wave) |>
  mutate(grp = 1:n()) |>
  gather(var, val, -Comb_hidpbunowave, -grp) |>
  unite("var_grp", var, grp, sep ='') |>
  spread(var_grp, val, fill = '')
  sum(duplicated(Dat_Wider$Comb_hidpbunowave))

Hi,

Just to update you I now seem to have found a workaround which gets this right: I think the only way to do it is to exploit the linking variables w_pno, w_sppno, constructing spouse/co-habiting partners' incomes where they both report each others' pnos AND where they report either living with their spouse (livesp_dv = 1) or living as if they are spouses (livewith = 1 | livewith = 3).
The existing benefit unit variable created does correctly place spouses/co-habitees in the same benefit unit within each household, so it's useful for creating this variable, but it's just that other adults, and other adults' earnings (sometimes much older adults), seem to be included in these benefit units. So you can't just sum individual income at 'benefit unit' level, without capturing other adults beyond spouses/co-habiting couples.

Once you've created that, you can then combine this with info on other household/family characteristics to create a complete variable on benefit unit income - e.g. roughly speaking individual earnings can be usesd for single-adult benefit units; household earnings for two-adult households where both are a couple; summed-up individual earnings, without any of the above adjustment, for cases where there's 2 adults in the benefit unit and they're both a couple. Basically sppno is needed for cases which don't fit these examples.

There is however one issue I've noticed, which you might want to think about as a potential improvement in future updates: I noticed sppno_dv mostly only exists for live-in legal spouses (livesp_dv = 1). There's a lot of missingness in this variable for people co-habiting as if spouses (livewith = 1 / 3), even though for purposes of benefits calculation their combined income should be counted. I'm finding most of the missingness can be resolved through other adjustments (i.e. where we know there are just these two in the benefit unit; see my paragraph above), but in future this potentially calls for the pno to be asked for of this second group too, as a separate and distinct variable.

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious but this seems to me the only workaround, but I'll keep reviewing it. I don't think this needs a response - and I appreciate you're not responsible for the syntax of derived variables - but just flagging in case useful.

Best wishes,

Tom