The 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) asks questions about two programs administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA): Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI or Social Security). To qualify for SSI a person must have limited income and assets, while to qualify for OASDI a person must have worked in the paid labor force. Both SSI and OASDI provide benefits to people who are blind, disabled, or over a specified age. Individuals may receive payments from both SSI and OASDI at the same time, further blurring the distinction between these programs. Matching SIPP data to SSA administrative records revealed that nearly one-half of respondents who reported SSI receipt in the first wave of the 2014 SIPP panel did not have a corresponding administrative record indicating receipt of SSI payments. Further analysis of the linked data suggested that “program confusion” between SSI and Social Security likely contributed to the high level of false positive SSI reports.

In this paper, the term “program confusion” refers to respondents reporting receipt of SSI payments when administrative records do not corroborate that response. In other words, a respondent said “yes” they received SSI but administrative records do not show that benefits were paid. In the 2014 SIPP, program confusion occurred in two ways. Some respondents “double reported” benefits by indicating receipt of both SSI and OASDI when administrative records indicated only Social Security receipt. Others misreported benefits or “program s wapped” by indicating only SSI receipt when administrative records indicated only Social Security receipt. To a lesser extent, respondents double reported both SSI and OASDI or misreported OASDI when they were only receiving SSI. The outcomes presented in this paper focus on program confusion associated with false positive SSI reports.

The paper begins by providing background on the SSI program and the rates of false positive SSI reports in prior SIPP panels. Next, the data section provides an overview of the wave 1 2014 SIPP data and SSA administrative records used for the analysis. It also describes the procedure used to link the SIPP data to administrative records . The methodology section explains topic flags, which indicate whether a respondent received SSI in at least one month of the reference period. It also describes the method used to impute SSI topic flags and the approach used to correct cases of program confusion. The results section describes the evaluation of the initial or “uncorrected” SSI topic flag, discusses the solutions considered and presents the results for the “corrected” topic flag.