Description

POPSTAT reports the person's status in the population as an adult civilian, member of the U.S. Armed Forces, or a child.

The CPS is in large part a labor market survey and is used to measure unemployment among the civilian labor force. As such, children under age 15 were not asked questions pertaining to economic activity. Members of the Armed Forces also were asked only a small number of questions relating to demographic facts, migration, and income during the previous calendar year. Thus, POPSTAT provides a useful "filter" variable for excluding persons who had no responses for many of the survey questions. If children and/or members of the Armed Forces were excluded from the universe of a particular question, they appear only in the "not in universe" category of a variable.

POPSTAT was drawn from the final CPS interview, conducted 2-5 months before the ATUS interview. A person's status in the population was not updated at the time of the ATUS interview.

Comparability

This variable is comparable across years.

Universe

Availability

• 2003-2023

Flags