Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Definition: You must meet the following requirements: 1. You are unmarried or considered unmarried on the last day of the year. 2. You paid more than half the cost of keeping up a home for the year. 3. A qualifying person lived with you in the home for more than half the year (except temporary absences, such as school). However, your dependent parent does not have to live with you. A foster child must live with you all year.
Head Start
Definition: Children enrolled in Head Start programs or similar programs sponsored by local agencies to provide preschool education to young children are counted under nursery school or kindergarten as appropriate. Also see schools, nursery.
Related Term(s): School, nursery
Health insurance
Health insurance coverage
Definition: A person was considered covered by health insurance at some time during the year if he or she was covered by at least one of the following types of coverages: Employer/union; Privately purchased (not related to employment); Medicare; Medicaid; Military health care (military, CHAMPUS, CHAMPVA, VA, Indian Health Services); Someone outside the household; Other. An individual can have more than one type of coverage during the year.
Hedge fund
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
Definition: An investment fund which pools money from individuals and institutional investors (such as mutual funds or pension funds) and which uses more aggressive investment strategies than mutual funds. For example, hedge funds may used borrowed money or securities to attempt to make a profit, they may execute automatic, computer-driven securities trades, and they may invest in derivative instruments (such as futures or options). The number of investors in a given hedge fund is restricted by law, so the minimum investment is typically quite high.
Hire (JOLTS)
Hispanic origin
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
Definition: This refers to persons who identified themselves in the enumeration process as Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or of other Hispanic origin or descent. Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race; thus, they are included in both the white and black population groups.
Horizontal equity
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
Definition: Hourly compensation costs, as measured in the BLS international comparison series, are defined as (1) all payments made directly to workers–pay for time worked (basic time and piece rates plus overtime premiums, shift differentials, other premiums and bonuses paid regularly each pay period, and cost-of-living adjustments), pay for time not worked (such as for vacations and holidays), seasonal or irregular bonuses and other special payments, selected social allowances, and the cost of payments in kind–before payroll deductions of any kind, and (2) employer expenditures for legally required insurance programs and contractual and private benefit plans (such as retirement plans, health insurance, unemployment insurance, and family allowances). In addition, for some countries, compensation is adjusted for other taxes on payrolls or employment (or reduced to reflect subsidies), even if they do not finance programs that directly benefit workers, because such taxes are regarded as labor costs. The BLS definition of hourly compensation costs used in its international comparisons series is based on the International Labour Office standard definition of total labor costs. However, it does not include all items of total labor costs; the items excluded are the costs of recruitment, employee training, and plant facilities and services, such as cafeterias and medical clinics. Hourly compensation costs include all the items of compensation covered in the BLS series Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, the Employment Cost Index, and index of hourly compensation (published with the index of labor productivity); hourly compensation costs also include the costs of payments in kind and other taxes and subsidies, which are not included in the other BLS compensation series. The classification of the compensation items and the terminology used in the definitions differ among the series.
Economics: Principles & Practices
Definition: Basic unit of consumer sector consisting of all persons who occupy a house, apartment, or separate living quarters
Definition: A household consists of all the people who occupy a housing unit. A house, an apartment or other group of rooms, or a single room, is regarded as a housing unit when it is occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters; that is, when the occupants do not live and eat with any other persons in the structure and there is direct access from the outside or through a common hall. A household includes the related family members and all the unrelated people, if any, such as lodgers, foster children, wards, or employees who share the housing unit. A person living alone in a housing unit, or a group of unrelated people sharing a housing unit such as partners or roomers, is also counted as a household. The count of households excludes group quarters. There are two major categories of households, ”family” and ”nonfamily”.
Definition: The term ”size of household” includes all the people occupying a housing unit. ”Size of family” includes the family householder and all other people in the living quarters who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption. ”Size of related subfamily” includes the husband and wife or the lone parent and their never-married sons and daughters under 18 years of age. ”Size of unrelated subfamily” includes the reference person and all other members related to the reference person. If a family has a related subfamily among its members, the size of the family includes the members of the related subfamily.
Definition: The householder refers to the person (or one of the people) in whose name the housing unit is owned or rented (maintained) or, if there is no such person, any adult member, excluding roomers, boarders, or paid employees. If the house is owned or rented jointly by a married couple, the householder may be either the husband or the wife. The person designated as the householder is the ”reference person” to whom the relationship of all other household members, if any, is recorded. The number of householders is equal to the number of households. Also, the number of family householders is equal to the number of families. Head versus householder. Beginning with the 1980 CPS, the Bureau of the Census discontinued the use of the terms ”head of household” and ”head of family.” Instead, the terms ”householder” and ”family householder” are used. Recent social changes have resulted in greater sharing of household responsibilities among the adult members and, therefore, have made the term ”head” increasingly inappropriate in the analysis of household and family data. Specifically, beginning in 1980, the Census Bureau discontinued its longtime practice of always classifying the husband as the reference person (head) when he and his wife are living together.
Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
Definition: Includes all production by households, which consists of families and unrelated individuals, and by nonprofit institutions that primarily serve households (NPISHs).
Related Term(s): Business sector, General government sector
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Definition: Informal name for the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, from the names of the act’s original sponsors.