Introducing the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Insurance Component with Administrative Records (MEPS-ICAR): Description, Data Construction Methodology, and Quality Assessment
August 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-29
Abstract
This report introduces a new dataset, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Insurance Component with Administrative Records (MEPS-ICAR), consisting of MEPS-IC survey data on establishments and their health insurance benefits packages linked to Decennial Census data and administrative tax records on MEPS-IC establishments' workforces. These data include new measures of the characteristics of MEPS-IC establishments' parent firms, employee turnover, the full distribution of MEPS-IC workers' personal and family incomes, the geographic locations where those workers live, and improved workforce demographic detail. Next, this report details the methods used for producing the MEPS-ICAR. Broadly, the linking process begins by matching establishments' parent firms to their workforces using identifiers appearing in tax records. The linking process concludes by matching establishments to their own workforces by identifying the subset of their parent firm's workforce that best matches the expected size, total payroll, and residential geographic distribution of the establishment's workforce. Finally, this report presents statistics characterizing the match rate and the MEPS-ICAR data itself. Key results include that match rates are consistently high (exceeding 90%) across nearly all data subgroups and that the matched data exhibit a reasonable distribution of employment, payroll, and worker commute distances relative to expectations and external benchmarks. Notably, employment measures derived from tax records, but not used in the match itself, correspond with high fidelity to the employment levels that establishments report in the MEPS-IC. Cumulatively, the construction of the MEPS-ICAR significantly expands the capabilities of the MEPS-IC and presents many opportunities for analysts.
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:
payroll,
survey,
respondent,
employee,
employ,
employed,
employment estimates,
employment data,
insurance,
workforce,
tax,
associate,
employment measures,
employment statistics,
irs,
medicaid,
filing,
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income data
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Internal Revenue Service,
Center for Economic Studies,
Administrative Records,
Current Population Survey,
Decennial Census,
Medical Expenditure Panel Survey,
Employer Identification Numbers,
University of Minnesota,
American Community Survey,
Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics,
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,
Business Register,
United States Census Bureau,
Federal Insurance Contribution Act,
Protected Identification Key,
Department of Health and Human Services,
Quarterly Workforce Indicators,
Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board,
Disclosure Review Board,
Center for Administrative Records Research,
Personally Identifiable Information,
Data Management System
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