DOCUMENTATION FOR INDIVIDUAL WEEKLY WAGE AND SALARY INCOME FROM CPS MORG FILES This text file contains an explanation of the weekly individual wage and salary income file from the CPS Merged Outgoing Rotation Group files (morg_earnwke) from 1979 to 2000. These data were calculated using the NBER-created variable "earnwke" which measures personal weekly wage and salary income at the time of the survey. (The original CPS variable is "a-werntp".) Salaried workers are asked their weekly pay. For hourly workers, this is calculated by multiplying their hourly wage by the usual number of hours they work per week. The data are organized in state-year format. There are 22 observations (1979-2000) for each state, plus the District of Columbia and an observation with the total for the US (= 1,144 records). All earnings data have been adjusted to 2002 dollars using the CPI deflator for all urban consumers. The columns of the text file are separated by spaces and do not contain variable names; in these text-format files, state names are surrounded by quotation marks and two-word names contain spaces (e.g.,"New York"). The variables in the data appear in the following order: 1. statename 2. stcode - Two-letter state postal abbreviation 3. year 4. p10earnwke - 10th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 5. p20earnwke - 20th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 6. p30earnwke - 30th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 7. p40earnwke - 40th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 8. p50earnwke - 50th percentile (median) of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 9. p60earnwke - 60th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 10. p70earnwke - 70th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 11. p80earnwke - 80th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 12. p90earnwke - 90th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 13. meanearnwke - average total weekly wage & salary income (all) 14. minearnwke - Minimum total weekly wage & salary income (all) 15. maxearnwke - Maximum total weekly wage & salary income (all) 16. sdearnwke - Standard deviation of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 17. ineqearnwke - Ratio of the 90th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income to the 10th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (all) 18. gini_earnwke - Gini coefficient for total weekly wage & salary income (all) 19. n_earnwke - Number of non-missing values (all) 20. nwgt_earnwke - Weighted number of non-missing values (all) 21. men_p10earnwke - 10th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 22. men_p20earnwke - 20th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 23. men_p30earnwke - 30th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 24. men_p40earnwke - 40th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 25. men_p50earnwke - 50th percentile (median) of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 26. men_p60earnwke - 60th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 27. men_p70earnwke - 70th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 28. men_p80earnwke - 80th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 29. men_p90earnwke - 90th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 30. men_meanearnwke - average total weekly wage & salary income (men) 31. men_minearnwke - Minimum total weekly wage & salary income (men) 32. men_maxearnwke - Maximum total weekly wage & salary income (men) 33. men_sdearnwke - Standard deviation of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 34. men_ineqearnwke - Ratio of the 90th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income to the 10th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (men) 35. men_gini_earnwke - Gini coefficient for total weekly wage & salary income (men) 36. men_n_earnwke - Number of non-missing values (men) 37. men_nwgt_earnwke - Weighted number of non-missing values (men) 38. wom_p10earnwke - 10th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 39. wom_p20earnwke - 20th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 40. wom_p30earnwke - 30th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 41. wom_p40earnwke - 40th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 42. wom_p50earnwke - 50th percentile (median) of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 43. wom_p60earnwke - 60th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 44. wom_p70earnwke - 70th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 45. wom_p80earnwke - 80th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 46. wom_p90earnwke - 90th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 47. wom_meanearnwke - average total weekly wage & salary income (women) 48. wom_minearnwke - Minimum total weekly wage & salary income (women) 49. wom_maxearnwke - Maximum total weekly wage & salary income (women) 50. wom_sdearnwke - Standard deviation of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 51. wom_ineqearnwke - Ratio of the 90th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income to the 10th percentile of total weekly wage & salary income (women) 52. wom_gini_earnwke - Gini coefficient for total weekly wage & salary income (women) 53. wom_n_earnwke - Number of non-missing values (women) 54. wom_nwgt_earnwke - Weighted number of non-missing values (women) 55. cpideflator - Deflator used to adjust values for inflation (this is provided so that the user may calculate the unadjusted values). This deflator uses the consumer price index and is uniform for all states. 56. statecpi - This is a state-specific deflator from 1963 to 2000, except for Alaska and Hawaii. A description of how this deflator was created can be found in Berry, William D., Richard Fording and Russell Hanson, "An annual cost of living index for the American states, 1960-1995", Journal of Politics, 62:550-567. The updated deflator files can be found at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080/ICPSR-STUDY/01275.xml UNIVERSE: The CPS MORG universe for personal weekly wages includes only non-self-employed workers for pay (i.e., only private and government employees working for pay). We also excluded respondents who reported weekly wage and salary income of $1 or less. For more information, visit the NBER at http://www.nber.org/data/morg.html. WEIGHTING: We used the "earnwt" variable provided by unicon, divided by 12, to produce weighted estimates.