Today or Last Year? How Do Interviewees Answer the CPS Health Insurance Questions?

Jeanne Ringel and Jacob Klerman

No WR-288, Working Papers from RAND Corporation

Abstract: CPS estimates of annual health insurance coverage are below estimates from other surveys and administrative data. One potential explanation is that respondents misinterpret the question and report current rather than past year status. The authors use CPS data matched to administrative enrollment records for Medi-Cal in California to evaluate this possibility. The individual-level matched data allows them to explore the validity of CPS responses under different enrollment scenarios, where “truth” is based on administrative data. While they find some support for the reference period argument, their findings appear more consistent with a combination of cognitive perspectives on interviewing and stigma.

Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2005-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2005/RAND_WR288.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ran:wpaper:wr-288

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from RAND Corporation Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benson Wong ().