State Profile of California

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

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INTRODUCTION AND LIST OF TABLES

Introduction

The State Profile of California presents a detailed series of tables on economic security, child well-being, child care, and health care. The tables compare California with the nation as a whole on all of these measures. The tables are based on the 2002 National Survey of America's Families.

Each table follows a similar format. The top (or left) panel presents data for California while the bottom (or right) panel presents data for the nation as a whole. In most tables, the data presented are the number of people who fall into the stated category, the percent of people in that category, and the standard error of the percent. Definitions and notes for all tables appear after Table 41.

Estimates from the NSAF, like those from all surveys, are subject to various types of error. Sampling error is the most common limitation reported in survey results. Evaluating statistical precision based solely upon sampling error may be misleading. Measurement error, error due to undercoverage, and nonresponse bias may introduce equally large sources of error.

National Survey of America's Families

The National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) is one of only a few surveys to provide reliable estimates on measures of child and family well-being for selected states, as well as for the nation as a whole. The survey oversamples low-income families (those with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty threshold). The large low-income sample also generates large samples of racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and people participating in government programs.

The Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project fielded NSAF in 1997, 1999, and 2002. For each round, the survey provided information on over 100,000 nonelderly persons (about 70,000 nonelderly adults and 35,000 children).

Along with a large, nationally-representative sample for the nation, NSAF has large, state-representative samples for 13 states (Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin). Together, these states are home to more than half the nation's population. They also represent a broad range of fiscal capacity, political traditions, and approaches to government programs.

NSAF Topics

The NSAF examines a broad range of issues related to family well-being.

• Economic security includes income, employment, earnings, participation in education and training programs, participation in welfare programs, child support receipt and payment, food security, and housing and economic hardship.
• Health and health care includes health insurance coverage, health care use and access, health status and activity limitations, and reasons for not participating in public programs.
• Child well-being includes educational and cognitive stimulation, behavior problems, child care arrangements, school engagement, and social and other development activities.
• Family environment includes family structure and household composition, contact with non-custodial parents, parent psychological well-being, parent stress, and parent volunteer and religious activity.

NSAF can generate state-level estimates of child, nonelderly adult, and family well-being indicators. NSAF data enable researchers to make comparisons across states at a given point in time. Multiple rounds of the survey permit analysis of change within a state over time and across states over time. In addition, researchers can use NSAF data to produce point-in-time and change-over-time estimates at the national level.

NSAF Methods

Extensive information about the survey, including the design features, response rates, weighting procedures, and treatment of nonresponse, is available in a series of online methodology reports at http://anf.urban.org/nsaf/.

Sampling. The primary sampling method for the NSAF was a random selection of telephone numbers. In households without telephones, cellular phones were provided to complete interviews. Before administering the interview, households were screened to determine eligibility. Households composed only of adults age 65 and over were not included in the survey. In households with children, up to two children were randomly selected, one under 6 years old and one between the ages of 6 and 17. Information about the children and the household was obtained from the adult who knew the most about the children. In 95 percent of the cases, this was a biological, adoptive, or stepparent. If the household included childless adults, one or two of these were randomly chosen to be interviewed. In households without children, one or two nonelderly adults were selected randomly for interviewing.

Estimation. NSAF sampling weights are used to provide unbiased aggregate estimates for each state and for the country as a whole. The weights were applied to all survey items in an effort to: (1) compensate for differential probabilities of selection for households and persons; (2) reduce biases occurring where nonrespondents have different characteristics than respondents; (3) adjust, to the extent possible, for undercoverage in the sampling frames and in the conduct of the survey; and (4) reduce the variance of the estimates by using auxiliary information. Control totals were based on the 2000 Census estimates at the national and state levels by age, sex, and race/ethnicity.

For most questions the item nonresponse rates were very low, often less than 1 percent. As is the case with any household survey containing questions about sensitive information (such as income), the NSAF occasionally encountered significant levels of item nonresponse. In particular, nonresponse rates for items related to income were around 20 percent—consistent with item nonresponse rates in other surveys such as the Annual Demographic (March) Supplement to the Current Population Survey.

For NSAF data in general, nearly all questions on employment, earnings, and family income were imputed when missing, as were selected items from the sections on health care coverage and health care use and access. In most cases, the imputation for a particular survey item was carried out by assigning the value of that item from a randomly-drawn respondent case to a nonrespondent case that had similar values on other variables thought to be related to the missing item of interest.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

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