Calculating median earnings in PUMS

Jennifer Lee over 10 years ago

Does anyone know how to do this? I am looking at a specific subgroup, and I want to know the median earnings. I'm using WAGP (wages or salary income) and SEMP (self-employment income), but DataFerrett automatically calculates averages instead of medians, and I'm not sure how to sum these two variables to arrive at total earnings. Any help is appreciated!

Jennifer Lee over 10 years ago

Update: There is a value for earnings (PERNP), but I don't know how to find the median using DataFerrett. Thanks.
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Stas Kolenikov over 10 years ago

Do you have access to statistical software (R, SAS, Stata)? If you do, you would want to download the PUMS data the way you need them (ipums.org, in my opinion, provides the best customizable environment to do this: you can easily select just the variables, the samples and the geographies that you need), and estimate the median earnings using the survey commands in these packages. A few years ago I developed a Stata package for estimation of percentiles and their standard errors.
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Jennifer Lee over 10 years ago

Thanks! Yes, I will go through iPUMS.
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