UM23-20: Enhancing the RAND HRS CAMS Public Use File
Researchers
Abstract
In 2001 the Health and Retirement Study launched a supplementary survey, the Consumption and Activities Mail Survey (CAMS). CAMS is a biennial survey of a random subsample of HRS participants. Its purpose is to collect detailed information on household spending. The RAND HRS team processes the resulting data, including imputations of missing values, and constructs longitudinally consistent summary variables of household spending categories. The resulting data set and documentation is shared with the research community as the RAND HRS CAMS Longitudinal File. In this project, we propose (i) to investigate discrepancies in health insurance premiums as measured in the HRS core and in the CAMS; (ii) to enhance the imputation methods of missing values in components of CAMS spending categories; and (iii) to expand the granularity of spending measures included in the RAND HRS CAMS Public Use File.