DOI: 10.3886/icpsr37652
title: Current Population Survey: Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), United States, 2019
title: Archival Version

description: The Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) 2019 Supplement is part of the Current Population Survey (CPS) Series. The CPS is a source of official Government statistics on employment and unemployment. The Census Bureau conducts the ASEC (known as the Annual Demographic File prior to 2003) over a three-month period, in February, March, and April, with most of the data collected in the month of March. The ASEC uses two sets of survey questions, the basic CPS and a set of supplemental questions.
The CPS, administered monthly, is a labor force survey providing current estimates of the economic status and activities of the population of the United States. Specifically, the CPS provides estimates of total employment (both farm and nonfarm), nonfarm self-employed persons, domestics, and unpaid helpers in nonfarm family enterprises, wage, and salaried employees, and estimates of total unemployment.
In addition to the basic CPS questions, respondents were asked questions from the ASEC, which provides supplemental data on poverty, geographic mobility/migration, and work experience. Comprehensive work experience information was given on the employment status, occupation, and industry of persons aged 15 and over. Additional data for persons aged 15 and older were available concerning weeks worked and hours per week worked, reason not working full-time, total income and supplemental income components. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, marital status, veteran status, educational attainment, occupation, and income. Data on employment and income refer to the previous calendar year, although demographic data refer to the time of the survey.
The occupation and industry information variables in this data collection can help the data users identify individuals who worked in arts and culture related fields. The occupations are listed in a category entitled "Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations," which includes professions such as artists, designers, actors, musicians, and writers (see Appendix B of the User Guide for further category details). Industries related to the arts and culture are in the "Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation" category (see Appendix C of the User Guide for further category details). For example, using the occupation and industry information variables from the ASEC help data users to obtain statistics about people in artists' occupations that receive supplemental income, live public housing, or are full-time students.
The ASEC data provided by the Census Bureau are distributed in a hierarchical file structure, with three record types present: Household, Family, and Person. The ASEC is designed to be a multistage stratified sample of housing units, where the hierarchical file structure can be thought of as a person within a family within a household unit. Here the main unit of analysis is the household unit.
description: The purpose of the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) survey is to collect social and economic characteristics information for each person who is a household member as of the interview date. The survey administers questions on income to measure the level of family income and household composition from which poverty status is determined.
description: The Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) 2019 survey was conducted as part of the Current Population Survey, an ongoing data collection effort of the United States Census Bureau. ASEC was administered to a portion of the CPS sample in March of 2019.
description: These data contain 6 weights designed for calculating population level estimates and an additional 161 replicate weights.

<strong>A_FNLWGT</strong> is the final weight designed for generating population estimates for items on the regular monthly CPS. The final weight is the product of: (1) the basic weight, (2) adjustments for special weighting, (3) noninterview adjustment, (4) first stage ratio adjustment factor, and (5) second stage ratio adjustment factor. This final weight should be used when producing estimates from the basic CPS data.
<strong>MARSUPWT</strong> is the ASEC Supplement weight. Differences in the questionnaire, sample and data uses for the CPS and the ASEC Supplement result in the need for additional adjustment procedures for this weight. The supplement weight should be used for producing estimates from ASEC Supplement data.
<strong>HSUP_WGT</strong> is the household weight and <strong>FSUP_WGT</strong> is the family weight. Household and family weights are the weights assigned from the householder or reference person after all adjustments have been made and should be used when tabulating estimates of families-households.
<strong>A_ERNLWT</strong> is an earning weight, which is a simple ratio estimation to the person's labor force status by age, race, and sex. When tabulating estimates of earnings based on basic CPS data, use the earnings weight.
<strong>SPM_WEIGHT</strong> includes weights related to the Supplemental Poverty Measures.

Please see the User Guide for further weighting information Additionally, please see the document "Estimating ASEC Variances with Replicate
Weights" for more information on how to integrate the Dataset 2 replicate weights into the main dataset.
description: Response Rates: For the cases eligible for the 2019 ASEC, the
basic CPS household-level unweighted nonresponse rate was 16.6 percent. The household-level
unweighted nonresponse rate for the ASEC was an additional 18.9 percent. These two nonresponse rates lead to a combined supplement unweighted nonresponse rate of 32.4
percent.
description: A multistage probability sample was used for the housing unit. The sample was based on the results of the decennial Census, with coverage in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) is also supplemented with a sample of Hispanic households identified previous months. More detailed information about the sampling frame can be found in the User Guide.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Main Data File
DS2: Replicate Weight File
description: The civilian noninstitutional population of the United States living in housing units, and members of the Armed Forces living in civilian housing units on a military base or in a household not on a military base. Smallest Geographic Unit: FIPS code
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)Users are strongly encouraged to read the User Guide, which contains the questionnaire for the supplement, as well as additional technical documentation.In 2014, Annual Social and Economic supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) was collected using an updated survey instrument. Further changes were made in 2015. In 2019, the Census Bureau completed an overhaul of its editing procedures to take full advantage of the improvements to the survey in 2014 and 2015. In addition to making new variables available on retirement income and various types of health insurance coverage, the updated processing system also offers improved imputation methods and more detailed data quality flags. For more information, please visit the Current Population Survey's website describing the changes.For additional information, please visit the Current Population Survey: Annual Social and Economic Supplement website.