This file is a four-year longitudinal file derived from the respondents to the MEPS Panel 23 sample. The persons on this data set represent those who were in the MEPS population (U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized) for all or part of the 2018-2021 period. The file contains a longitudinal weight variable (LONGWT) and all variables from the 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 full-year consolidated data files (HC-209, HC-216, HC-224, and HC-233, respectively). When applied to the persons who participated in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, the weight variable (LONGWT) enables users to make national estimates of person-level changes in selected variables (e.g., health insurance, health status, utilization, and expenditures). In addition, LONGWT can be used to develop cross-sectional type estimates for the four-year period and for each year individually based on only the Panel 23 sample.
For more details on loading MEPS PUFs into R, SAS, and Stata, please visit the MEPS GitHub page.
*The PDF version of the codebook is recommended for printing; the HTML version is database driven and lets you navigate quickly to details on each variable.
**Right-click on the data file link, then select Save Target As or Save Link As to download the file.