Health Insurance Dynamics (HIDyn)
Overview
The Health Insurance Dynamics (HIDyn) database was created by Penn State's Center for Health Care and Policy Research, with funding from The Commonwealth Fund and the help of Penn State's Population Research Institute. HIDyn (pronounced "hidden") is being shared with the research community in order to promote scholarship regarding U.S. health insurance in general and the dynamics of health insurance in particular. HIDyn makes longitudinal data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census's 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) available to health care researchers and students in an easy-to-use format for studying health insurance patterns and evaluating coverage reform. Research and policy analysis with these data will inform the design and implementation of policies to cover the uninsured, as well as the evaluation and improvement of existing public and private coverage programs.
HIDyn was constructed as part of Filling the Gaps, a research project sponsored by The Commonwealth Fund and led by Pamela Farley Short, Professor of Health Policy and Administration and Director of the Center for Health Care and Policy Research. HIDyn consists of longitudinal micro-data describing the health insurance status, income, employment, and demographics of each survey participant in each of the 48 months covered by SIPP. Many of the dependent and independent variables that are likely to be needed in analyzing changes and differences in health insurance over time with SIPP are readily available in this database.
A brief introduction to the Survey of Income and Program Participation is provided in the HIDyn Data and Documentation page. Users are strongly encouraged to access additional information about the survey on the Census Bureau's SIPP website. The HIDYN Data and Documentation page also provides information about the creation of the database, including the extraction and reformatting of variables from the SIPP public use files and the construction of new analytic variables from the public use data.
This project is supported by The Commonwealth Fund, a New York City-based private, independent foundation. The views presented here are those of the research team and not necessarily those of The Commonwealth Fund, its directors, officers, or staff.
Last modified: 06/21/06 | Contact Webmaster
