Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)

Panels of approximately 12,500 eligible households are introduced each year in February. The content of SIPP was developed around a core of labor force, program participation , and income questions designed to measure the economic situation of persons in the United States. The first part of the core data is a control card that records basic social and demographic characteristics for each person in a household, as well as changes in such characteristics over the course of the interviewing period.

The second element is the core portion of the questionnaire, with questions repeated at each interview on labor force activity, types and amounts of income, participation in various cash and noncash benefit programs, attendance in postsecondary schools, private health insurance coverage, public or subsidized rental housing, low-income energy consumption assistance, and school breakfast and lunch participation. Also available are topical modules which provide a broader context for analysis by adding questions on a variety of topics not covered in the core section and are assigned to particular interviewing waves of the survey.

Topics include education and work history, assets and liabilities, child care, property income and taxes, welfare history and child support, pension plan coverage, marital history, migration history, fertility, functional limitations and disability, support for nonhousehold members, and utilization of health and medical care services. This data comprises government records extracted from the Archival Research Catalog (ARC).

See the ARC catalog entry for this series for more information on this data and how to order it.