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RE: Employment status variables in the pre- and post- 1997 AHS data

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Kimiko Shiki asks:

>>For the post-1997 data,
HHWLINEQ (householder worked at all last week) shows employment status;
"hours and days worked last week" seems to be only for the people who
worked "at home."<<

This is incorrect.  WLINEQ and HHWLINEQ refer to any work in the past
week.

>>For the pre-1997 data (more specifically, at this moment I am looking
at
the 1985 National AHS),
I cannot find any variables that show employment status of householders
as far as I can read the pre-1997 survey codebook.<<

>>Could somebody confirm this point that there is no employment status
variable in the pre-1997 data?<<

WLINE1-WLINE8 hold person line numbers for up to eight workers in the
household.  If one of these matches PLINE (the line number for the
householder), then he or she worked in the past week.  It wouldn't
surprise me if we put the householder's line number in WLINE1 whenever
he or she was employed, but I haven't verified that.

Dav Vandenbroucke
Senior Economist
U.S. Dept. HUD
david_a._vandenbroucke@hud.gov
202-402-5890