The Future of SIPP for Analyzing Extended Measures of Well-Being

Abstract

Existing measures of well-being that are regularly collected and published are limited to annual census money income estimates for families and individu­ als and the poverty statistics that are derived from those same numbers using the poverty thresholds. The data are collected in the Current Popu­ lation Survey each March and are tabulated and published by the Census in late Summer and Fall. The tabulations and the public-use microdata files that are also made available from the CPS have vastly improved the factual and analyti­ cal base for our understanding of distributional issues and redistributional policies. The change since the fielding of the Survey of Economic Opportunity in the early 1960's is enormous. Along with improved statistical description, over the past 20 years have come new, more sophisticated questions, which cannot be answered from the CPS. The addition of new public benefit programs has had major impacts on well­ being that are not reflected in census money income. Some six years ago I wrote about the increasing gap between our official measures of poverty and what ordinary people might suppose being poor to mean.! The gap has continued to grow. In addition, available indicators of growing inequality have revived interest in more comprehensive and comprehensible measures of material wel­ fare of persons and the households in which they reside. 2 The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) was developed to serve these needs by collecting more detailed income data, covering a longer span of shorter periods, and by giving explicit attention to the use of various government programs.