Survey of Income and Program Participation

In the 2008 SIPP panel, ESLFCON3 and EJBCONT3 were not edited and values ranged from 0-99%. In the 2014 SSA Supplement, these variables are edited. Based on content analysis, we put 1% as the minimum and 20% as the maximum an individual or an employer can contribute to their pension. Due to the design of the survey instrument’s open-ended answer list, this edit also assigns rules for editing the percent contributions when the values received are unclear. These rules are based on the 1% minimum/ 20% maximum and comparisons to deferred earnings in administrative records (a proxy for earnings put towards a pension).

EPENSNYN/E3TAXDEF logical edit: E3TAXDEF was asked to people who previously in the survey did not specify that their employer offered a tax-deferred retirement plan. However, up until this question in the survey, some respondents answered previous questions that implied their employer offered a tax-deferred retirement plan. In order to maintain consistency across the survey, if E3TAXDEF was answered ‘yes’ and EPENSNYN (the initial question asking about employer pension plans) was missing, EPENSNYN was logically imputed to a ‘yes.’ If E3TAXDEF was answered ‘yes’ and EPENSNYN had previously been answered as ‘no,’ both of these responses were kept on the file.