WORK LIMITING HEALTH AND DIVORCE BEHAVIOR: A RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS WITH SIPP DATA

Research on economic need in the United States dates back at least to Jacob Riis's classic 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives. In the century since that publication, government efforts to reduce poverty have expanded enormously. Along with the expansion of anti-poverty programs, the demand for research on the nature of economic need in this country has mushroomed. A primary motivation for beginning the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) was to provide more and better information on families' level of eco­ nomic need and their use of government programs. This paper analyzes the ex­ tent to which SIPP has fulfilled that promise and presents recommendations for further changes and improvements in SIPP that might make it more useful to those who want to investigate poverty and anti-poverty programs. Data on income and program participation serve four basic functions in un­ derstanding poverty. First, income statistics are used to calculate measures of economic need, such as the official poverty rate, which are used as a measure of economic and social progress. Second, comparative measures of economic need across different subgroups of the population provide a measure of the relative progress and well-being of different groups in society, and help focus attention on those whose needs remain unmet. Third, data on program partici­ pation and family income provide information on who receives government transfer income and on how effective these programs are in reducing economic need. Fourth, repeated observations over time provide evidence on how all of these issues evolve. In particular, as anti-poverty programs and the macro

The self-reported number of workdays missed due to injury or illness, or sick days, is a reliable measure of health among working-aged adults. Although sick days is a relatively underexplored health-related outcome in migration studies, it can provide a multidimensional understanding of immigrant wellbeing and integration. Current understandings of the association between migration status and sick days are limited for two reasons. First, in the United States, few nationally representative surveys collect migration status information. Second, researchers lack consensus on the most reliable approach for assigning migration status. We use the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine sick days and draw comparisons between two methods for assigning migration status—a logical approach and a survey approach. The logical method assigns migration status to foreign-born respondents based on characteristics such as government employment or welfare receipt, while the survey approach relies on self-reported survey responses. Sick days among immigrants was correlated with and predicted by other health conditions available in the SIPP. Comparisons of sick days by migration status vary based on migration assignment approach. Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) reported more sick days than non-LPRs and appear less healthy when migration status is assigned using the logical approach. The logical approach also produced a gap in sick days between LPRs and non-LPRs that is not replicated in the survey approach. The results demonstrate that if migration status is not measured directly in the data, interpretation of migration status effects should proceed cautiously.

We study associations among women’s current marital status, past marital history, and later-life labor force participation. We first document these relationships using data from the 1986 to 2008 waves of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We then exploit variation in laws governing divorce across states and over time to quasi-experimentally identify how the timing of an exogenous increase in divorce risk (that is, the introduction of unilateral divorce) impacts employment and retirement outcomes for older women. The spread of unilateral divorce, we find, was associated with cross-cohort differences in the probability of divorce over the lifecycle. For women with a low risk of divorce, later exposure to unilateral divorce significantly increases the probability of full-time employment later in life, and significantly decreases retirement wealth. This finding suggests that ever-divorced women are working longer remedially; when a woman unexpectedly divorces later in life, she is less likely to have engaged in precautionary human capital investment and might have to work longer to increase her assets prior to retirement. For women with a high risk of divorce, later exposure to increases in divorce risk does not impact full-time employment after age 50 but is positively associated with investment in education post marriage. These women invest more in their own human capital within marriage, which might insure them against increases in exogenous divorce risk at later ages.

We study associations among women's current marital status, past marital history, and later-life labor force participation. We first document these relationships using data from the 1986 to 2008 waves of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). We then exploit variation in laws governing divorce across states and over time to quasi-experimentally identify how the timing of an exogenous increase in divorce risk (that is, the introduction of unilateral divorce) impacts employment and retirement outcomes for older women. The spread of unilateral divorce, we find, was associated with cross-cohort differences in the probability of divorce over the lifecycle. For women with a low risk of divorce, later exposure to unilateral divorce significantly increases the probability of full-time employment later in life, and significantly decreases retirement wealth. This finding suggests that ever-divorced women are working longer remedially; when a woman unexpectedly divorces later in life, she is less likely to have engaged in precautionary human capital investment and might have to work longer to increase her assets prior to retirement. For women with a high risk of divorce, later exposure to increases in divorce risk does not impact full-time employment after age 50 but is positively associated with investment in education post marriage. These women invest more in their own human capital within marriage, which might insure them against increases in exogenous divorce risk at later ages.

One of the methods of increased privacy protection is the creation of synthetic data sets. In this article we consider the differences that emerge between synthetic and nonsynthetic data in one of the very few attempts to create a synthetic data file for a major household survey data set, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The data we use are nonsynthetic and synthetic versions of the SIPP linked to administrative earnings histories, known as the SIPP Gold Standard File (GSF) and the SIPP Synthetic Beta (SSB), respectively. We present a set of results on short-run earnings dynamics estimated on both the SSB and the GSF, focusing on earnings volatility—the variance of short-run earnings growth rates—as well as an error components decomposition of inequality into permanent and transitory components. We find that short-run instability—both volatility and the transitory component of earnings inequality—is higher in the SSB than the GSF although the differences are somewhat dependent on modeling choices and the treatment of low earnings. Differences between the two data sets emerge both because cross-sectional inequality is higher in the SSB than in the GSF and because the dynamics of earnings over both shorter and longer periods appear to be different.

The dynamics of participation in government programs can be studied using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This paper examines some of the issues involved in such analysis, focusing first on the kinds of analysis that SIPP data allow. The second section discusses the major problems with the SIPP that complicate longitudinal analyses. A concluding section suggests changes that could simplify and improve the data.

Federal survey data collection identifies people with disabilities predominantly by using a 6-question sequence asking about different functional impairments known as the American Community Survey-6 (ACS-6). However, little is known about the specific diagnoses identified by the ACS-6 or whether they vary across demographic subgroups. To characterize the disability diagnoses identified by the ACS-6 and assess to what extent they identify a consistent population across demographic subgroups. This cross-sectional study among people with disabilities responding to the 2023 or 2024 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) assessed the prevalence of 36 different diagnosis groupings in the ACS-6 as a whole and within each of the individual questions, as well as how the identified diagnoses varied by age group, race and ethnicity, sex, and educational attainment, with further disaggregation by cognitive disability status. Data were analyzed between August 1 and September 15, 2025. Identification as people with disabilities using the ACS-6. Diagnoses reported by survey respondents as causing the functional impairments they listed in the SIPP. A total of 13 341 people with disabilities (52.2% female; mean [SD] age, 53.0 [23.0] years) responding to the SIPP were included. Among people with disabilities aged 22 to 64 years, the most common diagnoses were anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorders (prevalence, 15.6%; 95% CI, 14.5%-16.9%), depression (15.3%; 95% CI, 14.1%-16.5%), unspecified musculoskeletal issues (13.5%; 95% CI, 12.5%-14.6%), back or spinal problems (11.6%; 95% CI, 10.6%-12.6%), and unspecified neurologic disorders (10.8%; 95% CI, 9.8%-11.8%). The most common disability diagnoses reported by respondents identified by the ACS-6 were different across age groups but similar across demographic groups defined by sex, race and ethnicity, and educational attainment. The results of this cross-sectional study suggest that the ACS-6 identifies a similar population across demographic subgroups not characterized by age but highlight substantial heterogeneity in the population of people with disabilities within these subgroups and across age groups. Contemporary debates regarding future revisions to disability data collection in federal population surveys should address the ability to account for this heterogeneity in survey design.

The authors use data from the 1984 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to investigate whether employer-provided health insurance reduced worker mobility (a phenomenon termed job-lock). The SIPP provides information on variables--particularly pension receipt, job tenure, and spouse job change--that were omitted from previous surveys and are, the authors argue, key to the estimation of well-defined mobility models. For dual-earner married men and women, the authors estimate a model that accounts for the interaction between husbands' and wives' job change decisions. For both married and single individuals, the results provide fairly strong evidence of job-lock among women, but only weak indications of job-lock among men. The authors speculate that this finding reflects higher health care use by women than by men.

The average age of grandparents in the U.S. in 2022 was 68 years. Grandparenthood is more common among older adults (aged 65 and older) than those in midlife (aged 40-64). In 2022, the percentage of older adults who were grandparents (67%) was more than 2.5 times greater than the percentage among those in midlife (24%). Data from the 2023 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) are used to update Wu, 2018 & Westrick-Payne, 2023 comparing midlife grandparents to those at older ages across demographic characteristics in 2022. The SIPP is a nationally representative household-based survey that directly asks respondents if they are a grandparent, making it one of the few national surveys that identify non-resident grandparents. This profile is number three in our 2024 series on grandparents in the U.S.

We propose a new methodology that does not assume a prior specification of the statistical properties of the measurement errors and treats all sources as noisy measures of some underlying true value. The unobservable true value can be represented as a weighted average of all available measures, using weights that must be specified a priori unless there has been a truth audit. The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) survey jobs are linked to Social Security Administration earnings data, creating two potential annual earnings observations. The reliability statistics for both sources are quite similar except for cases where the SIPP used imputations for some missing monthly earnings reports.

Guardianship and the Representative Payee Program

When debating the effect of undocumented immigrants on the economy, scholars often presume that undocumented immigrants are wage laborers rather than business owners. This study imputes the legal status of Mexican and Central American immigrants (MCAs) in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) between 1996 and 2008 to evaluate how legal status affects business ownership patterns. From 1996 to 2008, the SIPP asked a series of questions about business ownership and migration history that make it uniquely suited to an investigation of undocumented MCA business owners. Instrumental variables regressions reveal that undocumented immigrants had a lower likelihood of owning a business than documented immigrants, but undocumented and documented business owners derived similar incomes from their businesses. A lack of legal status may hold back potential entrepreneurs. MCA business owners of both legal statuses clustered into similar low-paying, low-growth industries, however, so regardless of legal status, there are likely limits to how much business ownership can promote economic mobility among MCAs. All told, scholars should do more to acknowledge the existence of undocumented immigrant business owners, measure their impact on the economy, and examine their influence on immigrant incorporation patterns.

The average age of grandparents in the U.S. was 67 years.Grandparenthood is more common among older adults (aged 65 and older) than those in midlife (aged 40-64).In 2021, the percentage of older adults who were grandparents (71%) was more than 2.5 times greater than the percentage among those in midlife (33%).Data from the 2021 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) are used to update Wu, 2018 comparing midlife grandparents to those at older ages across demographic characteristics.The SIPP is a nationally representative household-based survey that directly asks respondents if they are a grandparent, making it one of the few national surveys that identify non-resident grandparents.This profile is number 2 in our 2021 series on grandparents in the U.S.

This paper examines linkages between disability and health status and the returns to education and basic skills training. It bases analyses on two separate data sources: wave 3 from the 1993 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The data sets have been used to estimate standard wage equations with education and basic skills training among the independent variables. The NALS data set allows us to control for prose, quantitative, and document literacy. The wage equations rely on Heckit corrections for labor force participation, and we stratify by sex. We also estimate the wage equations stratifying by disability status (also with an appropriate econometric correction) to permit the coefficient estimates on all the regressors to vary by disability status. Overall, we find that the returns to education for individuals with a disability or poor health are positive, although of moderate size and equal to the returns for the nondisabled population. The findings suggest supply side policy options that maintain or improve access to and retention in educational opportunities are indicated. Basic skills training seems to be especially advantageous for some individuals.

Undocumented status is widely recognized as an important social determinant of health. While undocumented immigrants have lower levels of health care access, they do not have consistently poorer physical health than the US-born or other immigrant groups. Furthermore, heterogeneity by race/ethnicity has been largely ignored in this growing literature. This paper used the 2001, 2004, 2008 panels of the restricted Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), one of the only representative surveys equipped to adequately identify Asian undocumented immigrants, to compare health patterns between Asians and Latinos by immigration status. We examined three general measures of health/health access: self-rated health, disability, and current health insurance. Latino undocumented immigrants displayed some advantages in self-rated health and disability but had lower insurance coverage compared to US-born Latinos. In contrast, Asian undocumented immigrants did not differ from US-born Asians in any of the three outcomes. While undocumented status has been proposed as a fundamental cause of disease, we found no evidence that Latino and Asian undocumented immigrants consistently fare worse in health access or physical health outcomes than immigrants in other status categories. Different racial groups also appeared to have unique patterns between immigration status and health outcomes from one another.