Medical Expenditure Panel Survey

Intro and Overview

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a longitudinal survey focused on health care costs and insurance coverage. Although the survey has three key components (the Household Component, the Insurance Component and the Medical Provider Component) only the Household Component has public use files. The Medical Provider Component is used to supplement information collected from households, so the data quality is especially good. The Insurance Component is an employer survey that contains information about employer provided health insurance. It is not connected to the MEPS Household sample in recent years. Those data are only released in tabular form.

There are public use files for the Household Component available for download. The files are organized as person level, event level (e.g. hospitalization), job level or condition level. Some data elements are only available in restricted use data.

Tips for Getting Started

There are several helpful methods reports and slide decks for new researchers:

The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) has a beta release of IPUMS MEPS Links to an external site. that should make navigating the data much easier for new users.

Key Advantages

Longitudinal. Panel covers 2 years
High quality data on health expenditures

Key Disadvantages

Complex design, but not a huge barrier if using IPUMS.
Requires significant knowledge of healthcare.

Papers Using these Data

The MEPS webpage Links to an external site. provides a search tool to locate publications.