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3 Expanded Use of Administrative Records
Pages 37-96

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From page 37...
... The chapter first outlines a framework for evaluating the benefits and costs of different uses of administrative records for SIPP. Using the framework as a guide, the chapter reviews the uses of administrative records in SIPP's history to date, along with other uses of administrative records at the Census Bureau that are relevant to SIPP.
From page 38...
... appending administrative records values to survey records. The first three uses we term "indirect," in that administrative data are never actually recorded on SIPP data files; the last four uses are "direct," in that administrative data become part of the SIPP data files to a greater or lesser extent.
From page 39...
... . Indeed, the Census Bureau hopes that significantly greater use of administrative records can be achieved in a reengineered SIPP to improve the quality of reporting of income and program participation.
From page 40...
... providing higher-quality data in comparison to survey reports (the one benefit specifically identified by the Census Bureau)
From page 41...
... Costs The use of administrative records for a reengineered SIPP cannot be cost free. Staff time and other resources must be expended for acquisition   Prior to 1978, SSA files contain quarterly indicators of covered employment in addition to annual earnings.
From page 42...
... In its original concept for a new Dynamics of Well-being System (DEWS) , the Census Bureau had hoped that administrative records could be used directly to supply so much of the needed content as to make possible a significant reduction in the costs of the system compared with the current SIPP.
From page 43...
... Increased Delays Administrative records systems are managed first and foremost to facilitate the operation of assistance programs. The Census Bureau's need for timely information from records systems for statistical purposes is of secondary importance, at best, for program agencies.
From page 44...
... Disclosure risk is also increased because people in the agency supplying the administrative data have knowledge that could be used to identify individuals in SIPP files. Countering such increased risk could require the use of disclosure protection techniques that would diminish the value of the public-use microdata products and compel users who require the confidential data for their research to seek access to one of the Census Bureau's Research Data Centers (RDCs)
From page 45...
... . the ­ alternative of accessing microdata in an RDC is daunting because it adds delays in making a successful application to the delays that are already incurred in release of the files from the Census Bureau.
From page 46...
... . Some of the trade-offs involved in working with different types of administrative records for different purposes become evident in reviewing the history of uses of administrative records in SIPP and other Census Bureau programs.
From page 47...
... Consequently, no supplementary sampling frames were developed from administrative records for SIPP during this period although some work went forward on evaluation and related uses of administrative records. The Census Bureau carried out a handful of matches of SIPP panels with administrative records, which were facilitated by a successful program to obtain Social Security numbers from SIPP respondents and match them to SSA files for validation purposes.
From page 48...
... . Census Bureau staff also performed aggregate comparisons of selected estimates from administrative records sources and SIPP.
From page 49...
... . The Census Bureau has continued to provide exact matches of SIPP and SSA records for use by SSA staff for research and modeling of the OldAge, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI)
From page 50...
... SIPP Gold Standard Project Begun in 2002 with funding from the Census Bureau, SSA, and the National Science Foundation, the goal of the SIPP Gold Standard project is to develop a rich resource for retirement income and disability analysis that can be widely used. The gold standard file, which can be analyzed only at the Census Bureau, includes variables from the 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1996 SIPP panels matched with IRS summary earnings records (annual FICA-taxable earnings, 1937-2003)
From page 51...
... Illinois and Texas Matching Project Work with Illinois and Texas program records began prior to the SIPP reengineering effort with a project to match 1999-2003 subsidized child care and TANF files from the two states with Census Bureau survey data as part of a study funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
From page 52...
... . In a subsequent evaluation of an electronic event history calendar test, scheduled for early 2010, the Census Bureau hopes to compare the survey results with administrative records data not only from Illinois and Texas, but also from other states including Maryland (with which the ­ Census Bureau already has an arrangement for obtaining program records -- see below)
From page 53...
... OTHER CENSUS BUREAU USES OF ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS The Census Bureau has increasingly made use of administrative records in other programs, and many of these uses are relevant to a reengineered SIPP. Three major programs are briefly described below: the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD)
From page 54...
... The estimates are used in allocation of federal education funds to local jurisdictions. More recently, the Census Bureau began the Small-Area Health Insurance Estimates Program to provide state and county estimates of health insurance coverage using similar statistical models with CPS data and administrative records data for counties on food stamp recipients, federal income tax filers, and enrollees in Medicaid and CHIP.
From page 55...
... . Once a set of records, such as SIPP survey responses, has been matched via the PVS, it is then possible to use the resulting PIKs to match the survey records with other records that the Census Bureau has acquired as part of its initiative to integrate and make better use of administrative records.
From page 56...
... The work on StARS and the other administrative records acquired by the Census Bureau to date represents an excellent start on building the infrastructure to support widespread use of administrative records in C ­ ensus Bureau programs and in exploring uses of different kinds of records. The bureau's administrative records program, both now and in the future as it adds new sets of records and analysis capabilities, will be an important resource for applications of administrative records in a reengineered SIPP.
From page 57...
... . The Census Bureau's program to acquire federal administrative records demonstrates a high level of professionalism and competence in negotiating data acquisition and use agreements specific to each provider agency; developing and refining procedures for accurate matching, unduplication, and imputation of missing demographic characteristics; and building systems to enhance the level of confidentiality protection.
From page 58...
... , quarterly reports of employment and earnings from state workforce agencies (the same data obtained by the Census Bureau's LEHD Program) , and quarterly reports from state workforce agencies of unemployment insurance claimants.
From page 59...
... 2. Restricted access -- states or state agencies for which the authors could find specific enactments allowing the release of records for purposes that could include their use for a reengineered SIPP but that contain codified restrictions on access, disclosure, or use that the Census Bureau would need to agree to in a memorandum of understanding.
From page 60...
... , and Other Cash Benefits -- for Possible Use by the Census Bureau for SIPP State Category 1 Programs Category 2 Programs Category 3 Programs Alabama All four programs Alaska All four programs Arizona All four programs Arkansas All four programs California All four programs Colorado All four programs Connecticut UI* Medicaid, Other cash benefits, TANF Delaware All four programs Florida All four programs Georgia All four programs Hawaii UI Medicaid, Other cash benefits, TANF Idaho UI Medicaid, Other cash benefits, TANF Illinois Medicaid, UI Other cash benefits, TANF Indiana Other cash benefits*
From page 61...
... Category 1 includes states or state agencies with (a) specific enactments empowering a state agency to provide access to program records for purposes that could include their use for a reengineered SIPP or (b)
From page 62...
... specific laws prohibiting a state agency from releasing program records for a purpose such as their use for a reengineered SIPP.
From page 63...
... The legislative provisions for other states in this category are more onerous, such as requiring advance notification and consent from individuals in a program. Finally, of the 22 states that would appear able to provide records to the Census Bureau for a reengineered SIPP for at least 1 of the 4 programs studied (Category 1)
From page 64...
... Strategic Planning for Acquisition We applaud the Census Bureau's work on acquiring federal administrative records, which have great potential value for a reengineered SIPP in addition to many other bureau programs. The Census Bureau should continue that work and seek to acquire additional federal records to the extent possible, such as VA records.
From page 65...
... By "think strategically," we mean that the Census Bureau will need to develop priorities for acquisition of state records in light of the goals of SIPP and the importance of different kinds of program records for those goals. Three criteria for establishing priorities include the importance of the income source for lower income households, particularly in times of economic distress; the relative ease of acquiring the records; and the ability to cover a large proportion of the program caseload by acquiring records from a relatively small number of states.
From page 66...
... In addition to setting priorities among program records for acquisition, the Census Bureau will need to take account of acquisition issues in determining the types of uses to which it will put the records it acquires. In the short term, promising to restrict use of records to indirect uses, such as evaluation and perhaps improvement of imputation methods, could facilitate acquisition because the threats to confidentiality would be substantially lower than if the records were to be used directly in a reengineered SIPP.
From page 67...
... We encourage the Census Bureau to view the errors in administrative records and in matches of them with survey records in the same manner that the bureau and other statistical agencies have commonly viewed nonresponse and reporting errors in surveys -- namely, as problems to address but not a brick wall. Some of the same techniques that are used to evaluate survey
From page 68...
... Also, this use of administrative data, given that comparisons are at the aggregate level, is only the starting point of work to evaluate and improve the quality of the survey data. Yet aggregate comparisons are an important first step, one which we think the Census Bureau should put on a regular schedule and routinize to the extent possible.
From page 69...
... Nonetheless, some characteristics in the administrative statistics, such as type of TANF recipient unit -- single adult and children, two-parent family, or children only -- may be deemed accurate enough to be useful for comparison with SIPP estimates. To facilitate a program of regular aggregate comparisons, which should include not only SIPP, but also the CPS and perhaps other surveys that ask about income and program participation, the Census Bureau should
From page 70...
... , and other agencies could be detailed to work with Census Bureau staff to develop the most comparable estimates possible for their programs. In this way, aggregate comparisons could be prepared on a recurring basis that would make use of the program knowledge in the agencies and the survey research knowledge in the Census Bureau to ensure the highest quality and most useful comparisons.
From page 71...
... Resources permitting, the Census Bureau should not stop with the Illinois-Texas comparisons for TANF and food stamps -- and, indeed, the bureau is endeavoring to obtain administrative records from other states for use in evaluating the results of its electronic event history calendar test in early 2010 (see Chapter 4)
From page 72...
... . Improving Imputations Imputation Methods in SIPP SIPP, like other surveys, has missing data, which the Census Bureau processes so that the resulting data file represents the population that was sampled and has values for every item for every person and household in the file.
From page 73...
... .10 10  Program eligibility rules, in practice, are more complicated than a simple income threshold; they may involve not only income level, but also family composition, citizenship status, the value of certain types of assets, work expenses, out-of-pocket medical care expenses, shelter expenses, and the like. To the extent the Census Bureau can mimic the eligibility rules for a particular program in an imputation model, the better; however, applying even a simple income threshold is preferable to allowing program participation to be imputed to any record with a missing value.
From page 74...
... . To do so, the Census Bureau could estimate a logistic regression of the participation status indicator on predictors associated with program participation.
From page 75...
... On the basis of these kinds of evaluations, the Census Bureau could profitably revise its imputation models to include administrative records in order to improve the accuracy of the imputed values. An advantage of this use of administrative records is that timely availability of the records would not be critical.
From page 76...
... In addition, as part of an ongoing program for acquiring and using administrative records in a reengineered SIPP, the Census Bureau should establish a schedule for periodic reevaluation and improvement of model-based imputation routines with administrative records. Imputation routines should not be frozen for years and decades at a time, as has happened historically with SIPP.
From page 77...
... Direct uses of administrative records raise confidentiality concerns, which, in turn, could make it more difficult for the Census Bureau to release useful public-use microdata files. Such uses also raise concerns about the possible effects on timeliness and survey response.
From page 78...
... For income sources and programs for which the Census Bureau has access to administrative records, they could be used to supply values for missing survey responses on a one-to-one basis -- that is, an individual's record of participation and income amounts would be matched with and directly entered onto his or her SIPP record without using any type of imputation procedure. An imputation model would be used only for people who did not match to an administrative record or, in the case of state records, for people in states that did not provide records to the Census Bureau.
From page 79...
... The approach the Census Bureau would use to adjust survey reports might not be that used by a microsimulation model such as TRIM3. These models not only adjust reported program benefit amounts for individuals that report recipiency on the survey, but also "create" new recipient units and associated benefits from households simulated to be eligible that did not report participation in order to better approximate administrative
From page 80...
... As an alternative, the Census Bureau could follow a three-step process to achieve the same effect: 1. The first step would be to implement model-based imputations of the type described above, in which the model predicts administra tive records values for respondents with missing data on program participation and benefits.
From page 81...
... Strategic Considerations Adjusting survey responses for net reporting error would lead the Census Bureau in a direction that it is not often accustomed to taking for household statistics -- namely, that of producing a set of best estimates by combining sources of information in contrast to producing the data reported from a survey. The Census Bureau produces a small number of model-based estimates in its SAIPE and SAHIE Programs that use both survey and administrative data, but, in each case, the variable predicted is an estimate from a survey, such as the ACS estimate of poor school-age children.
From page 82...
... Given users' needs for data that are as accurate as possible and the seeming inability to obtain better reporting through survey instrumentation alone, we encourage the Census Bureau to actively explore the production of SIPP public-use microdata files that include adjustment factors for income sources and program participation to produce agreement with the best independent estimates. A prime target of opportunity could be the use of state records of employment and earnings that are provided to the LEHD Program to adjust reported values and in other ways improve the quality of employment and earnings data in SIPP.
From page 83...
... The Census Bureau can gauge the severity of disclosure risks from intruders who do not have access to the custodial agency's records by performing experiments that attempt to link SIPP records containing more or fewer substituted items from administrative records with externally available sources. The bureau could also determine the risks from intruders who do have access to the agency records.
From page 84...
... Code, which pertains to the Census Bureau, authorizes the secretary of commerce as follows: a. The Secretary, whenever he considers it advisable, may call upon any other department, agency, or establishment of the Federal Government, or of the government of the District of Columbia, for information pertinent to the work provided for in this title.
From page 85...
... (See "Confidentiality Protection and Data Access" below for a discussion of synthesizing techniques and alternative modes of data access.) This work has involved dedicated effort and leading-edge thinking by Census Bureau staff and academic researchers, but the results to date are mixed.
From page 86...
... In any event, the need for appending additional variables to SIPP should be carefully vetted with data users because of the implications for confidentiality protection and data access. CONFIDENTIALITY PROTECTION AND DATA ACCESS As summarized in Box 3-1, the Census Bureau, like other data disseminators that collect individual information under a pledge of confidentiality, strives to release data files that are not only safe from illicit efforts to obtain respondents' identities or sensitive attributes, but also useful for analysis.
From page 87...
... , which are difficult to use for nonstandard estimands.13 Nonetheless, when the amount of alteration is very small, the negative impacts of traditional disclosure limitation methods on data utility could be minor compared with the overall error in the data caused by nonresponse and measurement errors. The current SIPP public-use files (without linked administrative records values)
From page 88...
... For example, the Census Bureau could simulate sensitive variables or quasi-identifiers for individuals in the sample with rare combinations of quasi-identifiers, and it might synthesize those values that are available and potentially linkable in external databases. Partial Synthesis To illustrate how partially synthetic data might work in practice, we modify the setting described by Reiter (2004)
From page 89...
... For example, reporting comparisons of means, variances, and correlations in the observed and synthetic data does little to help analysts estimating complex models. One approach is for the Census Bureau to develop a verification server
From page 90...
... With the reengineered SIPP, such heavy synthesis may not be necessary. If the released data do not include such detailed administrative information as longitudinal earnings histories, the Census Bureau can synthesize only the values of quasi-identifiers for at-risk records and the linkable values available in administrative sources.
From page 91...
... For example, users of the server could be required to go through a licensing procedure. In addition, the server could keep track of and audit requests, 14  To date, SIPP files that have been linked to administrative records are not available in the RDCs outside the Census Bureau.
From page 92...
... Conclusion 3-2: The Census Bureau has made excellent progress with the Statistical Administrative Records System and related systems, such as the person validation system, in building the infrastructure to support widespread use of administrative records in its household survey programs. The bureau's administrative records program, both now and in the future as it adds new sets of records and analysis capabilities, will be an important resource for applications of administrative records in a reengineered Survey of Income and Program Participation.
From page 93...
... Recommendation 3-4: The Census Bureau should move to replace hot-deck imputation routines for missing data in the Survey of Income and Program Participation with modern model-based imputations, implemented multiple times to permit estimating the variability due to imputation. Imputation models for program participation and benefits should make use of program eligibility criteria and characteristics of beneficiaries from administrative records so that the imputed values reflect as closely as possible what is known about the beneficiary population.
From page 94...
... They also raise significant concerns about increased risks of disclosure and delays in the release of SIPP data products. Recommendation 3-6: In the near term, the Census Bureau should give priority to indirect uses of administrative records in a reengineered Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
From page 95...
... Recommendation 3-8: The Census Bureau should develop confidentiality protection techniques and restricted access modes for the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) that are as user-friendly as possible, consistent with the bureau's duty to minimize disclosure risk.


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