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1
Introduction
The most exciting thing going on in social science in the 1980s;
the most significant statistical survey in four decades; . . . the most
important data available in the 1980s for research on American
families and individuals; . . . a survey that . . . fillips] a major void
and benefits] many agencies....
(Hunt, 1985:99-100, 148)
The object of these glowing words the Survey of Income and Program
Participation (SIPP) began operations in the fall of 1983, when interview-
ers of the Bureau of the Census fanned out across the country to ask resi-
dents of 20,000 households a set of detailed questions about their social and
economic circumstances. At 4-month intervals ("waves") over the next 2-1/2
years, the interviewers returned to each household in the 1984 SIPP panel to
obtain updated information. The survey did not stop with one panel: be-
ginning in February 1985 and each year thereafter, Census Bureau inter-
viewers queried a new sample of households, revisiting each of them at 4-
month intervals over a period of about 2-1/2 years. What is this survey and
why were people so enthusiastic about its prospects?)
SIPP IN BRIEF
As its name implies, SIPP was designed to improve information on the
income distribution and economic well-being of the population and on par-
ticipation and eligibility for a wide range of government social welfare
1The set of comments quoted above about SIPP are from Charles Lininger, an economist
who directed developmental work on SIPP at the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services for several years; Joseph Duncan of Dun and Bradstreet, formerly chief statistician of
the U.S. government; Guy Orcutt, an economist at Yale University (recently retired); and
Bruce Chapman, director of the Census Bureau in the early 1980s.
13
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4
THE SURVEY OF INCOME AND PROGRAM PARTICIPATION
programs for example, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC),
food stamps, social security, unemployment compensation, Medicare, and
Medicaid. Other continuing surveys, including the Current Population Sur-
vey (CPS) March income supplement, which since the mid-1940s has sup-
plied most of the available statistics about household income, could not
meet the growing needs for information to support federal social welfare
program planning and socioeconomic research.
Within this broad framework, the following specific goals of SIPP and
some of the design features that resulted from those goals were identified:
· to improve the reporting of family and personal income, both cash
and in-kind, by source by asking more questions and by obtaining reports
more frequently than once a year;
· to obtain detailed information, comparable to administrative data, on
program participants, including multiprogram participants, and on the dy-
namics of participation over time by asking for monthly information at
each interview, with more detailed questions and relevant explanatory vari-
ables, and by following the same people to observe program entries and
exits;
· to obtain information necessary to determine program eligibility, in-
cluding data on assets, and to characterize participants in comparison with
eligible nonparticipants;
· to provide an opportunity to obtain timely information on emerging
concerns of social welfare policy, broadly defined-by including special
sections of questions (topical modules) on subjects of current policy interest
(e.g., disability, child support, day care, health status, and use of health
care);
· to maintain the quality of annual income and poverty statistics and
other cross-sectional estimates developed from the longitudinal SIPP data-
by starting a new SIPP panel every year with a fresh sample of households;
and
.
to improve both participant and income-by-source information by
comparing survey reports with venous administrative files.
The first SIPP panel that was introduced in October 1983 included
about 21,000 households. Because of budget restrictions, the sample sizes
of subsequent panels have varied from 12,500 to 23,500 households, and
some panels have had fewer than the originally planned eight interview
waves. The sample for each panel includes adults 15 years of age and older
who were living in the household at the time of the first interview; they are
followed if they move to new addresses during the panel's life. For chil-
dren under 15 and adults who reside in a household containing an original
sample adult during the life of a panel, data are collected only if they
continue to reside with an original sample adult.
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INTRODUCTION
15
The SIPP questionnaire contains two sections. The core section in-
cludes questions about income sources and amounts, program participation,
and labor force activity: it is asked in every 4-month interview wave. The
topical module section, which is also asked in all waves, includes one or
more modules on selected topics. "Fixed" topical modules, which are asked
of each panel once or twice in its life, cover assets and liabilities, income taxes
paid, annual income, program eligibility, and personal histories. "Variable"
topical modules, for which there is competition to appear in SIPP, have
ranged over a large number of topics, such as child care expenses, health
status and use of the health care system, housing costs and financing, and
child support.
SIPP was long in the malting: planning and development activities
spanned most of the decade of the 1970s. And when SIPP was originally
scheduled to become operational (January 1981), it appeared that the survey
would be stillborn: all funds for SIPP were deleted from the federal budget
in 1980 and again in 1981. A rescue effort mounted by the newly appointed
director of the Census Bureau and other staff in the executive branch and
Congress persuaded the administration and Congress in the summer of 1982
to restore full funding for SIPP in the budget of the Census Bureau. (The
original plan had been to have the survey sponsored by the Social Security
Administration and conducted by the Census Bureau, with costs divided
between them.) The restoration of funds permitted the survey to get under
way in 1983. It is currently funded at about $31 million annually.
Now, after nearly 9 years of operation, the Census Bureau has initiated
a thoroughgoing reassessment of SIPP. The survey has been functioning
long enough for users both inside and outside the Census Bureau to develop
experience in working with the data. In addition, results are available on
many aspects of SIPP operations and data quality from the extensive meth-
odological research program that has been part of SIPP since the beginning.
Hence, there is the basis for an in-depth review and consideration of changes
that could enhance the utility and cost-effectiveness of the program in the
future.
A review at this juncture is also timely because of the 10-year cycle-
centering around each decennial census-that typically characterizes evalu-
ation and redesign of the continuing household surveys that the Census
Bureau conducts. A new sample design for SIPP, based on data from the
1990 census about the geographic distribution and other characteristics of
the population, will be implemented beginning with the 1995 panel. It is
convenient to make any other major changes in the survey that appear desir-
able at the same time. Such changes could affect the design and content of
the SIPP questionnaire, features of the survey design (e.g., length of panels
or frequency of interviews), strategies for data collection and processing,
and publications and other data products.
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6
THE SURVEY OF INCOME AND PROGRAM PARTICIPATION
As part of the redesign effort, the Census Bureau asked the Committee
on National Statistics (CNSTAT) at the National Research Council to ap-
point a study panel to conduct a wide-ranging review of SIPP. The panel,
which began its work in summer 1990, was asked to pay particular attention
to ways to make more use of the longitudinal data from SIPP and to use
data from SIPP and other related surveys and administrative records to
improve the nation's statistical series on the distribution of income. The
panel was also asked to consider how the views of users could best feed
into the planning and conduct of the survey.
SIPP TO DATE
Achievements
There is no question, in our view, that SIPP is clearly established as a major
continuing survey that provides important information for federal policy
making and social science research. A few years ago, this conclusion might
have been in doubt, given the rocky childhood that followed SIPP's difficult
birth. As noted, repeated budget cutbacks forced the Census Bureau to
reduce the sample size for most panels and, for some panels, to reduce the
number of interview waves as well. The Census Bureau then experienced
difficulties in processing the large volume of data generated by the stream
of interviews from the field. Users also experienced problems in working
with the complex data sets from the survey and, consequently, only slowly
began to exploit the richness of the information.
At present, funding is sufficient for the Census Bureau to operate the
survey at the originally planned level. Even more important, the survey has
developed a growing community of committed users who have used the
data for a range of policy analyses arid research studies. In this section we
highlight just a few examples of important new insights from SIPP that are
relevant to social welfare policies and programs and to research.
Part-Year Poverty and Program Participation
Federal and state assistance programs such as AFDC and food stamps are
designed to help people who experience short periods of hardship, as well
as those in need for longer periods. SIPP provides information that was
previously unavailable on part-year periods of low income and on the pro-
portion of program recipients who rely on benefits for temporary assistance
in comparison with the proportion who depend on them over the longer
term.
Using data from the 1984 SIPP panel, Ruggles and Williams (1987:
Table 1) found that fully 26 percent of the population experienced at least
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INTRODUCTION
17
1 month of income below the poverty line in a year, although relatively few
people about 6 percent were poor every single month. These rates var-
ied dramatically across family types. For example, only 3 percent of people
in marred-couple families were poor every month of the year; in contrast,
26 percent of people in female single-parent families were poor every month.
Ruggles (1989:Table 1) estimated from the 1984 SIPP panel that the
median duration for receipt of AFDC was about 11 months, providing a
different picture of the program from previous analyses using annual data.
For example, Bane and Ellwood (1983), working with the Panel Study of
Income Dynamics (PSID), estimated that the median duration of-AFDC was
about 2 years. Although the reasons for the differences in estimated spell
length are not definitely established, it seems likely that the SIPP monthly
data pick up short spells of AFDC that are omitted or merged into fewer,
longer spells in the PSID annual data.2 In Ruggles's study, people most
likely to stop receiving AFDC in less than a year were the previously mar-
ried or previously employed (60-65 percent exited AFDC within a year). In
contrast, only 40 percent of never-married recipients exited the program
within a year, and another 40 percent were still receiving AFDC after 2
years.
Multiple Program Participation
The number and scope of federal and state assistance programs have grown
enormously since the 1960s. The annual data from the March CPS income
supplement can only show how many people receive benefits from more
than one program at some time during the year. SIPP can distinguish among
intrayear patterns of multiple program participation, specifically, whether
people receive multiple benefits concurrently or follow a sequential process
of program receipt.
Doyle and Long (1988:Tables D-1-D-6) found complex patterns of pro-
gram participation in the first 12 months of the 1984 SIPP panel. In the
initial month, 23 percent of the population participated in one or more of
the following programs: social security, Supplemental Security Income
(SSI), public assistance (including AFDC and general assistance), and food
stamps. Of program recipients, 24 percent participated in more than one
program. The most popular combinations were public assistance and food
stamps (70% of all multiple program participants), social security and food
stamps (9%), and social security and SSI (8%~. During the next 11 months,
about 23 percent of initial program recipients experienced at least one tran-
sition to a different program combination or ended their participation.
2In an analysis of AFDC receipt from the 1984 and 1985 SIPP panels, Fitzgerald (1992)
obtained the some results as Ruggles.
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18
THE SURVEY OF INCOME AND PROGRAM PARTICIPATION
Effect of Assets on Program Eligibility and Poverty
Public assistance programs typically place a low ceiling on the value of
assets that people can hold and still be eligible to receive benefits. More
generally, assets that people can "spend down" provide a cushion against
periods of low income. SIPP, in contrast to the March CPS, provides suffi-
cient information to assess the role that capitalizing on assets can play in
maintaining adequate income and, hence, consumption levels.
In a study with the 1984 SIPP panel, Ruggles and Williams (1989:Table
6) found that simulating the spend-down of financial assets eliminated 35-
40 percent of all the periods of poverty that were observed over a 32-month
period. However, the median duration of the remaining periods was slightly
longer than when assets were not taken into account.
Doyle and Trippe (1989:Table 15) found that a simulation of the food
stamp program for August 1984 based on SIPP data produced a lower esti-
mate of households eligible for benefits and hence a higher participation
rate in the program-than did a simulation based on March CPS data. A
primary reason was that the more extensive asset data in SIPP (in compari-
son with the CPS) resulted in disqualifying a larger number of households
from eligibility for food stamp benefits because they failed to meet the asset
test.
Health Insurance Coverage
Public and private spending for health care in the United States currently
accounts for one-eighth of the gross national product, yet many Americans
lack health care insurance. Issues of insurance coverage and affordability
of health care are at the forefront of public policy debate. SIPP provides
data that can inform policy makers about the extent to which loss of health
insurance coverage is a short-term or long-term phenomenon and whether
proposed public policies, such as mandated employer health insurance ben-
efits, are effectively targeted at the problem.
Using data from the 1984 SIPP panel for adults aged 18 and over,
Swartz and McBride (l990:Table 1) estimated that one-half of periods with-
out health insurance lasted less than 5 months and two-thirds lasted less
than 9 months. However, 25 percent lasted longer than 1 year, and 15
percent lasted more than 2 years. McBride and Swartz (1990:26) found that
people with longer uninsured periods (lasting 9 months or more) were more
likely to be unemployed or out of the labor force, have low monthly family
incomes, and work in a service occupation, in comparison with people with
shorter spells.
Moffitt and Wolfe (1990) found significant relationships between ex
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INTRODUCTION
19
pected health care benefits and the work-or-welfare participation decisions
of low-income female-headed families in the 1984 SIPP panel. An index of
the expected value of Medicaid benefits was negatively related to the likeli-
hood of employment, while an index of the expected value of private health
insurance benefits showed a strong positive association.
Behavioral Dynamics
SIPP has made important contributions to social science research, particu-
larly to increased understanding of the short-term dynamics of- individual
and family behaviors. A few examples of studies in this area include:
· Speare, Avery, and Goldscheider (1990), who examined the interrela-
tionship of leaving home and other characteristics in the 1984 SIPP panel:
they found that young women were more likely to leave their parents' home
than young men, that young men who had left were more likely to return,
and that the parents' income had a negative association and the young
person's employment, income, and education had a positive association with
nest leaving;
· Koo and Gogan (1988), who documented the extensive amount of
change experienced by households in their membership over a 9-month
period, using data from the 1979 research panel of the Income Survey De-
velopment Program (the predecessor to SIPP); and
· Fitzgerald (1991), who explored marriage prospects and the duration
of periods of welfare in the 1984 SIPP panel, finding that spouse availabil-
ity (as measured by the ratio of employed single men to all single men)
exhibited a positive association with the likelihood that a woman would exit
a spell of welfare.
Researchers have also developed and refined analytical methods and con-
cepts through their use of SIPP data. For example, a study by Hagstrom
(1991) of the work effort of husbands and wives in relation to their decision
to participate in the food stamp program involved the specification of a
complex three-way model of choices.
Overall, SIPP has provided the grist for a wide range of policy analysis
and research studies. The number of papers and articles based on SIPP data
increased appreciably from 1984 to 1990 (see Appendix A). Topics covered
in these studies include: income and poverty, jobs and work-welfare deci-
sions, program participation, the elderly, family change and living arrange-
ments, assets and wealth, child care and children, disability, health care and
health insurance, race and ethnicity, long-term care, migration, education,
veterans, and the rural population.
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20
THE SURVEY OF INCOME AND PROGRAM PARTICIPATION
Problems
Clearly, SIPP is an important survey for many areas of public policy and
research interest. However, there are problems in SIPP problems that
have kept the survey from proving as useful as it could have been in the
past and that, if not adequately addressed, could handicap its usefulness in
the future.
SIPP has one of the most extensive programs for data quality research
and improvement of any federal survey. On many dimensions of data qual-
ity, SIPP has registered signal improvements over the March CPS income
supplement.3 However, weaknesses many of which SIPP shares with other
surveys remain, including: incomplete coverage of the population, par-
ticularly young minority men; high nonresponse rates for some types of
income and assets; timing errors in reporting receipt of benefits from pro-
grams, along with errors due to confusion among program names; and loss
of sample cases (i.e., attrition or dropping out from a panel after the first
interview), particularly among low-income people, minorities, movers, rent-
ers, and single young adults.
The SIPP design has achieved success in generating detailed data for
analyzing the intrayear dynamics of income and program participation. However,
some aspects of the design that had broad acceptance at the outset have not
worked well or are now widely seen as limiting the usefulness of the survey
for important kinds of policy analysis. For example, the introduction of
new panels every year, when coupled with content changes, has contributed
to delays in data processing, with the result that few analyses have been
able to benefit from combining panels. The length of each panel-32 months-
limits the ability of the survey to provide information on such increasingly
important policy concerns as welfare dependency over the longer term. Also,
the survey lacks information for people who become institutionalized and,
in many instances, for children who move to another household. Of course,
the grave compromises to the original design necessitated by the imposition
of budget cuts on the Census Bureau namely the reductions in sample size
and number of interviews for most panels fielded to date have materially
affected the usefulness of the information.
Along with data quality and design limitations, users have been troubled
by problems with the data products from SIPP. There have been successes-
for example, the useful series of publications from the topical modules but
there have also been significant failures, including: long lags in releasing
3See Citro (1991); Jabine, King, and Petroni (1990); Singh, Weidman, and Shapiro (1988);
and Vaughan (1988) for comparative analyses of the quality of SIPP data.
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INTRODUCTION
21
microdata files;4 inadequate documentation and user support services; a
period of several years when no publications were issued from the core data
on income and program participation; and limitations in the data files and
reports that provide longitudinal measures from SIPP.
Over the last few years, the Census Bureau has worked hard, and with
appreciable success, to alleviate such problems as delays in producing data
products and the lack of a publication series for the core information. How-
ever, these improvements have come at a price that reduces the survey's flex-
ibility namely, the imposition of a freeze on the content of the core question-
naire.
SIPP is certainly not unique among federal surveys in experiencing prob-
lems, particularly given that it has been in a start-up phase. Moreover, it has
achieved many successes and served many important policy and research needs.
Yet the Census Bureau faces an especially heavy burden in striving to remain
on top of SIPP and to find cost-effective ways to improve it in the future.
SIPP is indeed unique in the following respect: it is arguably the most
complex continuing household survey considering the range and detail of
questionnaire items (many of them on complicated and sensitive topics), the
number and frequency of interviews and introduction of new panels, and the
large sample size-that the federal government has ever fielded. Although
it is certainly possible to simplify some aspects of SIPP so as to reduce the
data collection and processing burden (and this report discusses appropriate
ways to accomplish this), there is only so much to be gained in this direc-
tion. SIPP will remain inherently complex, given the complexity of the
real-world behavior that it is trying to measure. As such, SIPP requires the
highest level of quality in every component of its operation. There is little
room for mistakes, particularly in implementing innovations, given that SIPP's
size and complexity will rapidly compound any problems that occur.
SIPP is also unique from the Census Bureau's perspective in that the
Bureau both sponsors and operates SIPP, unlike all other household surveys,
for which it collects data on behalf of another statistical or policy analysis
agency. There is no "Center for Income and Program Statistics" that is the
counterpart of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Edu-
cation Statistics, or the National Center for Health Statistics. Hence, the
Census Bureau must cope with a much broader range of issues and bring to
bear a much broader range of expertise involving data content and analy-
sis as well as collection and processing than for any of its other household
surveys.
4Most analyses conducted to date have used the original 1984 SIPP panel, both because it
was the only panel available for a period of time and because of its large sample size (the
largest of any panel until 1990).
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THE SURVEY OF INCOME AND PROGRAM PARTICIPATION
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
Roles for SIPP
In considering the environment in which SIPP will operate in the future, we
have identified both challenges and opportunities for the survey and the
Census Bureau. SIPP, with its focus on income and program participation
and its longitudinal design, clearly has the opportunity to make even more
important contributions to policy analysis and research in the future than it
has to date. Public policy concern with questions such as the following is
growing and likely to continue to grow as the United States enters a period
of difficult economic and social adjustment:
· To what extent has the distribution of income and poverty become
less equal and what will be the future trends in inequality of well-being?
.
Do welfare programs lead to long-term dependency, and what can be
done to reduce dependency?
· What can be done to help the nation's children, many of whom,
particularly in single-parent families, appear to face increasingly bleak prospects?
· As the population ages, how severe will be the problems of long-
term care for the elderly, particularly for the "sandwich generation" that
must care for parents as well as children?
SIPP should be well positioned to shed light on these and related issues,
particularly if its design is modified in some respects. At the same time,
social and economic changes pose challenges for cost-effective data collec-
tion in SIPP (and other panel surveys).s Increasingly, fewer and fewer
households in the United States are "survey fnendly": that is, fewer house-
holds contain families, all of whose members live together and, if they
move, stay together and are easy to trace. More and more common are
situations in which one spouse becomes difficult to trace after a divorce;
children of divorced parents shuttle back and forth between parents; and the
relevant economic unit for understanding a child's financial circumstances
includes the custodial parent, the noncustodial parent, the new spouse of
one or both parents, and the child's grandparents. Also increasingly com-
mon are households in which several unrelated people reside and who share
some, all, or none of the living expenses. Low-income, inner-city areas
r.ontin~,f~ to node. cliff~lt nrnblems of data collection, particularly to obtain
SSee Bianchi (1990) for a review of changing patterns of family composition and other
socioeconomic trends that involve children, many of which have implications for survey data
collection. See Fein (1989) for a review of problems in obtaining complete coverage of young
minority men and other population groups in censuses and surveys; see also Shaw and Guthrie
(1992).
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INTRODUCTION
23
complete coverage of young men, many of whom "float" among several
households maintained by their relatives or friends. More and more people
are at risk of entering institutions, including long-term care facilities and
prisons: understanding the economic situation of their families requires
information on the institutionalized member. Whatever the family struc-
ture, sources of economic support whether in the form of new or modified
government programs, new financial instruments, or new fringe benefits-
continue to proliferate, and they present problems for accurate data collec-
tion.
Recent developments in questionnaire design research, survey collec-
tion and processing technology, and longitudinal analysis methods afford
opportunities for improving the timeliness and quality of data from SIPP
(and other panel surveys). Better understanding of how respondents answer
questions-obtained through cognitive laboratory expenments, focus groups,
and related methods-can lead to improved question wording and, conse-
quently, more accurate responses obtained with less burden. Computer-
assisted personal and telephone interviewing (CAPI and CATI) can facili-
tate the collection of high-quality data on complex topics in a manner that
minimizes the requirements for subsequent coding or editing and maximizes
the capacity to change the questionnaire as needed. The use of modern
database management systems can support an integrated approach to data
processing that makes it easier to link data for families and individuals
across interview waves and to improve data quality (e.g., by using all avail-
able information from prior waves to supply values for missing data). Im-
proved methods for analysis of behavioral changes over time (e.g., periods
of program participation and poverty), which take account of incomplete
observations and shifting family characteristics, can produce useful longitu-
dinal statistics for reports. At the same time, these methods and technolo-
gies pose substantial implementation challenges, particularly in the context
of an ongoing survey program of the size and complexity of SIPP.
The Panel's Report
We begin our detailed assessment with two chapters that focus on the goals
for SIPP. No survey program, no matter how large, can or should be all
things to all people; hence, it is critical to set out clearly the main goals for
the survey as a necessary precursor to considering changes in content, de-
sign, or other features.
In Chapter 2 we review the development of SIPP and its goals. We
summarize the conclusions reached by the Committee on National Statistics
from a preliminary assessment of SIPP in 1989; we summarize the views of
current users about goals for SIPP; and we present our conclusions and
recommendation about appropriate future goals for SIPP in light of policy
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24
THE SURVEY OF INCOME AND PROGMM PARTICIPATION
and research needs and budget and operational constraints. We reaffirm the
CNSTAT recommendation that SIPP concentrate on improving data on in-
come and Program participation, with a particular focus on the population
~~~~~~ ~~- r--o~ -- I- rat
that is economically at risk.
In Chapter 3 we identify priority areas for improvement within each of
SIPP's goals and address their broad implications for the content of the
survey. We also consider the relationship of SIPP to the March CPS and to
administrative records from the perspective of developing improved income
statistics.
In Chapter 4 we consider the basic design of SIPP. We review a range
of design parameters including panel length, recall length of the interview,
frequency with which new panels are introduced, sample size and design-
that have important implications for the quality and utility of the data and
for ease of survey operation. We discuss the pros and cons of alternative
designs and present the panel's preferred design, which includes extending
the length of each panel to 4 years and having new panels introduced every
other year rather than annually (to contain costs and reduce processing
burden). Several of the changes that we recommend to the survey's design
and content should greatly improve SIPP's ability to provide needed infor-
mation for addressing the increasingly important issue of welfare depen-
dency. These changes include lengthening each SIPP panel; keeping open
the option of further extending panel length to obtain additional observa-
tions for population subgroups of policy interest; and improving the retro-
spective information that is collected on respondents' previous program
participation and family background.
Next, in Chapter 5 we consider operational alternatives for SIPP data
collection and processing, including the use of computer-assisted interview-
ing and database management systems. We conclude that major improve-
ments are needed in data processing at the Census Bureau to enable SIPP to
run efficiently and at the same time have a capability for flexible response
to changing circumstances.
In Chapter 6 we change focus from issues of data input to those of data
output. Widespread dissemination of the information from SIPP through
regular publication series and well-documented, timely microdata files is
essential to the cost-effectiveness of the survey. We consider the dimen-
sions of the publication program and other products and services that should
be provided to users of the SIPP data. We pay particular attention to the
issues involved in appropriate publication and analysis of the rich longitudi-
nal data in SIPP.
In Chapter 7 we consider priority areas for SIPP methodological re-
search and evaluation, including research on the potential of new question-
naire formats to improve data quality. Such evaluation and research studies
are needed to supply important information to current users, to inform the
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INTRODUCTION
25
upcoming redesign of SIPP, and to provide the basis for the next major
reassessment and possible redesign of the survey, which should occur no
later than 2005.
Finally, in Chapter 8 we consider issues related to the oversight, coordi-
nation, and management of SIPP. We note that the Census Bureau has a
number of means of obtaining outside input to the survey program, and we
discuss ways in which the SIPP advisory mechanisms could be made even
more effective.
The preliminary evaluation of SIPP by the Committee on National Sta-
tistics (1989:75) recommended that our panel review the management of
SIPP within the Census Bureau. An effective management structure is a
key component to the success of any survey and is particularly critical for
SIPP because of the inherent complexity of the program and the fact that
the Census Bureau has a greater range of responsibilities for SIPP than it
does for its other household surveys. Moreover, the many changes that are
proposed as part of the upcoming redesign of SIPP-including changes in
content, survey and sample design, data collection and processing, and data
products- will place especially heavy burdens on management over the
next few years. We propose ways to strengthen the management of SIPP
that we believe are vitally important to the smooth implementation of the
redesign and, more broadly, to the successful operation of the Census Bureau's
income statistics program in future years.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
program participation
