The Current Population Survey
(CPS) Annual Social and Economic
Supplement (ASEC) is used to produce
official estimates of income and poverty,
and it serves as the most widelycited
source of estimates on health
insurance and the uninsured. Detailed
health insurance questions have been
asked in the CPS since 1988 as a part
of a mandate to collect data on noncash
benefits.
However, researchers have questioned
the validity of the health insurance
estimates in the previous version
of the CPS ASEC.1 In particular, the
estimate of the uninsured in the previous
calendar year was not in line with
other federal surveys or administrative
records, indicating that the CPS
ASEC did not capture as much health
insurance coverage in comparison.2
Additionally, these concerns extended
to the Medicaid undercount and general
misreporting of the source and
timing of health insurance coverage.3
To address these concerns, the Census
Bureau substantially redesigned the
CPS ASEC health insurance module
to improve estimates of health insurance
coverage. Evaluation of the new
questions included over a decade
of research, including focus groups,
cognitive interviews, and two national
field tests.4
In 2014, the Census Bureau implemented
changes to the CPS ASEC,
including a complete redesign of
the health insurance questions that
replaced the existing questions in
the CPS ASEC. Due to the differences
in measurement, health insuranceestimates from calendar year 2013
are different from estimates in previous
years; this report does not compare
estimates from the redesigned
CPS ASEC to the previous version
of the health insurance questions.
Researchers should take caution when
comparing results over time. In particular,
the estimate of the uninsured
population is lower than in previous
years, since the redesigned questions
capture more health insurance coverage
than the preceding CPS ASEC.
For more information on why the
CPS ASEC was redesigned, as well as
the results from the 2013 field test,
