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ALTERNATIVE MODEL DESIGNS: PROGRAM PARTICIPATION FUNCTIONS AND THE ALLOCATION OF ANNUAL TO 98 MONTHLY VALUES IN TRIM2, MATH, AND HITSM receipt of income from dividends, estates and trusts, and rents (net); total annual other asset income; receipt of income from veterans' benefits, unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation; total annual veterans'/work-related benefits income; and receipt of income from alimony and child support, other regular cash contributions, and all other cash income; total annual other cash income. All of the models allocate the aggregated unearned annual income totals to specific sources based on responses to the more detailed recipiency questions. This allocation is performed before the conversion of annual to monthly income amounts.5 TRIM2 The MONTHS routine allocates annual income from unemployment compensation and workers' compensation evenly across all weeks that are simulated to be not working, that is, unemployed or out of the labor force. It allocates asset income (the sum of interest, dividends, net rents, and income from estates and trusts) evenly across all 12 months, and all other unearned income (the sum of pension income, social security income, railroad retirement income, veterans' benefits, alimony and child support, other regular contributions, and all other cash income) evenly across all 12 months. MATH The ALLOY routine first allocates unemployment compensation, constructing an average monthly amount that is the reported annual amount divided by weeks of receipt times 4.333. Weeks of receipt is a variable calculated in another MATH routine based on observed relationships in administrative data for the unemployment insurance program between duration and total amount and on regulations regarding the maximum weekly benefits and ma ximum weeks of receipt. Then ALLOY constructs a monthly recipiency array for unemployment benefits. If the person experienced the same or longer period of unemployment compared with the period of benefit receipt, then months of receipt (equal to weeks of receipt divided by 4.333) are allocated to fall within 5In the future the models will no longer have to allocate unearned income by source. March CPS files beginning with the 1989 file (the 1988 file is being revised to fit the new format as well) provide amounts as well as recipiency for detailed sources of income. The additional detail has been included in the questionnaire since 1980, but the conversion of the Census Bureau's processing system to provide this detail on the public-use files was only recently completed; see Citro (in this volume), and Bureau of the Census (1990).