2000 American Community Survey Minimum and Maximum Codes
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The following eleven housing variables and nine person variables are top-coded in the 2000 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample files:
| Housing Variables | IPUMS Variables | Person Variables | IPUMS Variables |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity (monthly cost) - ELEP | COSTELEC | Wages or salary income last year - WAGP | INCWAGE |
| Gas (monthly cost) - GASP | COSTGAS | Self-employment income last year (signed) - SEMP | INCBUS00 |
| Water (yearly cost) - WATP | COSTWATR | Interest, dividends, and net rental income last year (signed) - INTP | INCINVST |
| House Heating fuel (yearly cost) - FULP | COSTFUEL | Social security income last year - SSP | INCSS |
| Condo fee (monthly amount) - CONP | CONDOFEE | Supplementary Security Income last year - SSIP | INCSUPP |
| Monthly rent - RNTP | RENT | Public assistance income last year - PAP | INCWELFR |
| Property taxes (yearly amount) - TAXP | PROPTX99 | Retirement income last year - RETP | INCRETIR |
| Fire/hazard/flood insurance (yearly amount) - INSP | PROPINSR | All other income last year - OIP | INCOTHER |
| Mortgage payment (monthly amount) - MRGP | MORTAMT1 | Age - AGEP | AGE |
| Second mortgage payment (monthly amount) - SMP | MORTAMT2 | ||
| Mobile home costs (yearly amount) - MHP | MOBLHOME |
The Census Bureau derived its top-codes based on the following rules:
- Within each state, all base dollar amounts are top-coded using the mean of all cases greater than the top-code national minimum value.
- The maximum bottom-coding value for all component income dollar amounts which can be negative is $10,000.
- Recodes of dollar amounts use the rounded top-coded or bottom-coded base dollar amounts without any additional top-coding or bottom-coding.
- Top-coded property taxes are further assigned to one of 68 categories.
- AGE is top-coded using the state mean of all cases greater than 90.
The top-codes listed below reflect the IPUMS data. Users should be aware that the IPUMS top-codes diverge from the top-codes listed in the Census Bureau's documentation for two main reasons:
- The Census Bureau rounds its top-coded values before releasing the public-use data. For example, wage and salary income is rounded to the nearest $1,000 such that an actual top-coded value of $158,333 would become $158,000 in the public-use data. In most cases, these top-codes are off by no more than 0.1% from what would have been obtained if the Census Bureau had released the original, non-rounded top-codes. Monthly electricity and gas costs variables are rounded to the nearest $10. Because IPUMS multiplies these amounts by 12 to obtain the annual electricity and gas costs, this rounding error is similarly multiplied by 12. Still, most IPUMS utility top-codes diverge from the non-rounded utility topcodes by no more than 1%.
- While the Census Bureau documents top-codes for property taxes as actual dollar amounts, the public-use version of this variable is collapsed into sixty-nine categories. Similarly, the number of minutes one takes to get to work is documented as a three-digit variable, but is released only as a two-digit variable.
The top-codes and bottom-codes for the 2000 ACS file are available here (.xls).