Income & Poverty Terms in the Glossary

• Age
• Gini Ratio/Index
• Marital Status
• Median Income
• Occupation
• Poverty
• Standard Error

Hourly Rate of Pay

The hourly rate of pay refers to the rate of pay received at the time of first job accession. It is obtained by two direct quesions: :"Was ... paid by the hour on this job?" and "What was ...'s regular hourly pay rate at the end of (read last month or 'to' date item 3b)?" Given the 4-month reference period in SIPP, it is conceivable that a could could have taken an hourly paid job in the first month of the reference period, received a raise during the reference period, and, therefore, not report the wage rate at which he or she entered."

Job Accession

In this report, a job accession was defined as not having a job in month but having a job in the following month. The method for identifying whether or not a person had a job in the course of a month was the "employer id number". In the course of a SIPP interview, if a respondent reported that a  job had been held during a month (either by himself or herself, or for someone else in the household), an employer id number is assigned to that individual's wage and salary job; if no job were held, the employerid number would be zero. The definition was made operational, therefore, by comparing month-to-month values of the employer id nymber across the 28-month survey period . Obviously, a number of jobs could have been held and numerous employer id numbers recorded. (In each SIPP interview, interviewers are instructed to"...enter the employer for whom... worked the most hours during the 4-month period or the most recent employer.") On the SIPP 1987 longitudinal file up to two jobs can be identified ( or two employer id numbers recorded) in the course of any one month. This situation may represent either a transition from one primary job to another or a case of multiple job holding. In the first instance, although a new job had been entered, it would not be counted as a job accession under the definition used in this report. In the second instance, where a person has taken a second job, the job accession would not be countedeither. This is because only the primary or main job is included in the definition.

Monthly Family Income

Persons were classified as members of a married-couple family, other family type, or as an unrelated individual as of the time of the first job accession. Their monthly family income, therefore, represents the sum of all cash income received by the individual and/or other family members. It may represent income from employment, assets (such as CD's, rental property, savings accounts), and other sources (such as Social Security, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, pensions , State unemployment compensation, and so on).

Race and Hispanic Origin

In this report, the population is divided into two groups on the basis of races: White and Black. Persons of Hispanic origin were determined on the basis of a question that asked for self-identification of the person's origin (or some other household member) from a flahcard listing ethnic origins. Hispanics were those who indicated thattheir origin was Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or some other Hispanic origin. Persons of Hispanic origin can be of any race.

Weekly Earnings

Weekly wage and salary earnings relate to the month in which a person experiencd their first job accssion. They were obtained by dividing the monthly earnings reported in the month in which the job accession occurred by the number of weeks worked by the individual in the month.