A new brief from SHADAC summarizes these and other COVID-era changes and challenges for four major federal surveys—American Community Survey (ACS), Current Population Survey (CPS), Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), and National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)—and explains what effects these adaptations may have for understanding 2020 data as it becomes available.

In 2020, SHADAC updated the SHADAC “Health Insurance Unit,” or “HIU,” to aid researchers in reconciling the differences between the way that a “family” is defined in federal surveys with the way a “family” is defined by most private and public insurance programs. These briefs outline the changes to SHADAC's HIU and the impacts of using it in analysis— specifically, analysis showing how the population distribution of family income changes using three different definitions of family.