The Future of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (1993) / Chapter Skim
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2 GOALS FOR SIPP
2 GOALS FOR SIPP
Pages 26-42
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From page 26... ...
We tour the landscape both historical and contemporaneous as background for our conclusions and recommendation for SIPP's goals for the future. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SIPP AND ITS GOALS As new and expanded government social welfare programs were introduced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the inadequacy of the then available statistical base about household economic resources and the need for and use of assistance programs became apparent.
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From page 27... ...
; and the absence of information on asset holdings and taxes, which are needed to determine program eligibility and also to fully characterize the economic status of the household sector. The Income Survey Development Program Impetus for a new survey of income and program participation arose in the Social Security Administration, where one of the first policy models developed from the CPS March supplement was housed, and in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
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From page 28... ...
to extend the scope and precision of policy analyses for a wide range of federal and state tax and social welfare programs; (2) to improve current estimates of income and income change, including annual and subannual estimates, by source of income; and (3)
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From page 29... ...
Moreover, the example of the ISDP led the Census Bureau to expand the detail collected in the March CPS income supplement on both cash and in-kind income and to adopt a new format for income reporting that the ISDP demonstrated resulted in more complete data. However, the need for a survey with the unique features of the SIPP design, especially monthly reporting for samples of households followed over time, remained.
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From page 30... ...
(1989~. That report documented problems experienced by the Census Bureau that resulted in a failure to achieve fully all of the goals originally set for SIPP.4 From its survey of uses of SIPP data made by federal agencies, the committee found that SIPP was reasonably successful in meeting the goal of describing the circumstances surrounding participation and eligibility for federal transfer programs (Committee on National Statistics, 1989:37-38~: Data from SIPP have already supported important studies of the characteristics of single and multiple program participants.
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From page 31... ...
Finally, the report noted that the prominent role originally envisioned for matches of administrative records with SIPP data has only been partly realized. The expectation was that administrative records would be used to increase sampling efficiency by providing supplementary frames of participants in specific programs or persons with other specified characteristics; to provide additional data (e.g., by matching with social security earnings records to obtain longitudinal earnings histories to add to the SIPP files)
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From page 32... ...
(By contrast, the March CPS does not have a regular program of validating SSNs, and, when matches are attempted, generally reports only an 80 percent success rate.) However, to date, there has been only limited use of administrative records for supplementation or evaluation of SIPP data.
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From page 33... ...
18, Nos.1-41.) Another source of information for the panel resulted from a specific part of our charge to consider ways in which SIPP might be used in conjunction with the March CPS and administrative records to develop improved statistics on income.
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From page 34... ...
Finally, the committee believes that there are a number of steps that are imperative to take in the short term to improve the capability of the SIPP program to meet its priority goals, even with the narrow interpretation Mat they have beers given by us and by the Census Bureau. These steps include restoring the sample size to that originally intended for the SIPP, developing estimates based on combined panels, and improving the quality and timeliness of the SIPP data products.
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From page 35... ...
Often they asked for more extensive topical modules, asked more frequently (e.g., on health and disability and child care) thereby contradicting the strong recommendation in the CNSTAT report that SIPP focus on the core income and program participation data.
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From page 36... ...
Specific suggestions included: adding supplemental samples of program beneficiaries drawn from administrative records; obtaining additional and higher quality information on selected topics from administrative records matches (e.g., with employer, social security, and IRS records) ; and routinely publishing comparisons of data from SIPP, the March CPS, and administrative records.
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From page 37... ...
10Smeeding notes that the Census Bureau has invested considerable effort in developing alternative income measures from the March CPS, specifically measures that exclude most taxes and include selected in-kind benefits and returns from assets see Chapter 3.. He compliments the Census Bureau on this effort but points to conceptual and measurement problems that remain.
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From page 38... ...
; instead, the goal should be to produce the best income statistics based on all available data sources-including the March CPS, SIPP, and administrative records. Census Bureau staff initially sketched Ollt an ambitious plan to accomplish this goal.
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From page 39... ...
Alternatively, exactly matched administrative values might be substituted directly in the SIPP records, if the problems of data access could be worked out. Then, the adjusted SIPP data would be used to improve the quality of income data from the March CPS through a related imputation or modeling procedure.
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From page 40... ...
For the March CPS, after completion of the work on wages and salaries, the next step is to study interest and dividend reporting using the same CPS-IRS exact-match file. The scope of potential exact matches with SIPP is much broader: for example, it involves linkages with records for assistance programs such as SSI, food stamps, and AFDC as well as a match with IRS data.
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From page 41... ...
Such data are vitally needed by government agencies to track a key component of the economy the extent and distribution of resources available to the household sector and to plan, operate, and assess government programs and policies that affect household resources. Despite improvements in the March CPS income supplement, a major survey is needed to obtain detailed and highquality measures of income and other economic resources (e.g., assets)
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From page 42... ...
Recommendation 2-1: The two primary goals of SIPP should be to provide improved information on the distribution of income and other economic resources for people and families and on eligibility for and participation in government assistance programs. Within these two goals, most attention should be paid to improving the information for people who are economically at risk.
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