Describing and assessing a new method of approximating categorical individual-level income using community-level income from the census (weighting by income probabilities).

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To assess a new approach (weighting by "income probabilities [IP]") that uses US Census data from the patients' communities to approximate individual-level income, an important but often missing variable in health services research.

Data sources

Community (census tract level) income data came from the 2017 5-year American Community Survey (ACS). The patient data included those diagnosed with cancer in 2017 in Ohio (n = 65,759). The reference population was the 2017 5-year ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (n = 564,357 generalizing to 11,288,350 Ohioans).

Study design/methods

We applied the traditional approach of income approximation using median census tract income along with two IP based approaches to estimate the proportions in the patient data with incomes

SUBMITTER: Kim U 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9643096 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature