Enhanced demographic-economic data sets

Survey of Current Business, Nov, 1988 by Roger Herriot, Chester Bowie, Daniel Kasprzyk, Sheldon Haber

The core is a set of questions that are asked at the first interview and then updated in each subsequent interview. The core collects the basic data on labor force, income, and program participation for each of the 4 reference months. Among the items included in the core are the following:

. Information associated with wage and salary earnings--e.g., industry and occupation codes, hours and weeks of work, and hourly earnings for up to two jobs;

. Data associated with self-employment--e.g., the type of business (farm or nonfarm), earnings, whether it was incorporated, the profits and losses from the business--for up to two self-employment jobs;

. Data associated with nonearned income--e.g., Aid to Families with Dependent Children, supplemental security income, general assistance, workmen's compensation, social security and other retirement income, miscellaneous sources of income (such as alimony, child support, income for foster child care, and educational assistance), and noncash benefits (such as food stamps, Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program, medicaid medicare, and health insurance coverage);

. Data associated with asset holdings--e.g., income from savings accounts, bonds, stocks, and rental property--for the 4-month reference period on both individual and joint recipiencies.

A wide variety of topics not covered in the core portion of the questionnaire are collected in topical modules. The module data may be analyzed independently of, or in conjunction with, the core data. The topics include many subjects, such as wealth, taxes, health, and personal histories (e.g., lifetime work experience, marriage, and education). Collection and validation of social security numbers in the SIPP

The SIPP data system has always been thought of as a combination of data from administrative records and household surveys. To make these linkages accurate, social security numbers (SSN) are obtained for sample individuals. These numbers are then verified and corrected to maximize the number of accurate linkages to other record systems.

Persons who refuse to provide an SSN are not included in the verification process. The Social Security Administration identifies (by machine validation) incorrectly reported numbers and then clerically resolves these cases along with those cases not reporting an SSN. This work is completed by the fourth wave interview, at which time a field followup is conducted to obtain missing SSN's (provided they are not refusals) and to reconcile inconsistencies in SSN or demographic data generated by the computer match or by the clerical resolution.

The following summarizes the SSN validation results from the wave 1 sample of the 1984 panel: Total wave 1 sample persons, 53,588; persons who refused to provide an SSN and were excluded from the validation process, 1,674; persons eligible for SSN validation, 51,914; validated SSN's (85 percent of those eligible), 44,172; unvalidated SSN's (mostly children who have no SSN), 7,742. Sater (1986) concluded that the SSN acquisition rate for persons who have SSN is between 93 and 97 percent.