DOI: 10.3886/icpsr09746.v1
title: National Medical Expenditure Survey, 1987: Household Survey, Prescribed Medicine Data [Public Use Tape 14.1]
title: Version 1

description: The Household Survey is one of the three major components of 
 the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES). (The other two 
 components are the Survey of American Indians and Alaska Natives 
 [SAIAN] and the Institutional Population Component.) Like its 
 predecessors, the 1987 NMES provides information on health expenditures 
 by or on behalf of families and individuals, the financing of these 
 expenditures, and each person's use of services. The Household Survey 
 was fielded over four rounds of personal and telephone interviews at 
 four-month intervals. Baseline data on household composition, 
 employment, and insurance characteristics were updated each quarter, 
 and information on all uses of and expenditures for health care 
 services and sources of payment was obtained. Public Use Tape 14.1 
 contains one record per unique medication per reference period for each 
 eligible person in the Household Survey who reported having purchased 
 or otherwise obtained a prescribed medication during that reference 
 period. The file provides information, obtained in four rounds of 
 interviews covering calendar year 1987, on prescribed medicines and 
 conditions related to the prescription, the number of purchases and 
refills, and expenses and sources of payment.
description: The Household Survey sample is a stratified multistage area 
 probability design with a total sample of roughly 35,000 individuals in 
 14,000 households who completed all rounds of data collection. 
 Oversampling of population subgroups of special policy interest 
 includes poor and low-income families, the elderly, the functionally 
impaired, and Black and Hispanic minorities.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Main Data File
DS2: SAS Control Cards
DS3: Technical Programming Information and Data Dictionary
description: Noninstitutionalized civilian population of the United 
States.
description: (1) A record can represent one or more purchases or 
 refills of a particular medication within the reference period, and a 
 variable identifying the number of times the medication was obtained 
 within the period is provided on each record (PRCHDATX). (2) In order 
 to account for all instances in 1987 of use and related expenses for 
 one medication by one person, it is necessary to link all records with 
 the same medication code and the same person identifier. (3) Aggregate 
 annual person-level information on prescribed medicine and other health 
 services use as well as detailed demographic, employment, insurance, 
 round-specific eligibility status indicators, and reference period 
 dates is provided on Public Use Tape 13 for the entire civilian 
 noninstitutionalized population represented by the NMES household 
 survey including those without prescribed medicines in 1987. (4) The 
 age distribution of the prescribed medicine data includes 0-17 years (N 
 = 12,563), 18-44 years (N = 23,912), 45-64 years (N = 27,634), and 65+ 
 years (N = 45,971). The racial/ethnic distribution includes American 
 Indian and Alaska Native (N = 755), Asian/Pacific Islander (N = 770), 
Black (N = 18,488), White (N = 87,663), and other (N = 2,404).