The SIPP collects information on contributions to employer-sponsored retirement accounts, including asking respondents about self-contributions (TSCNTAMT_IRA, TSCNTAMT_401, and TSCNTAMT_PEN) as well as employer-contributions (TECNTAMT_IRA and TECNTAMT_401) to retirement accounts. These variables measure the total amount contributed over the reference period.

There are instances where respondents report contributions to retirement accounts as a percent of their income. We discovered this when observing unusually low amounts reported for contributions. Any reported amount that is less than 10 is interpreted as a percent of one’s annual income. When respondents report a percent, we multiply the reported value with the annual earnings from their main job to determine the total amount contributed to the respondent’s retirement account during the reference period.

Status flag values of seven indicate that the values were generated using a combination of either reported amounts, hot deck imputation, logical imputation, cold deck imputation, or imputation from a range. While respondents are reporting a value for their contributions in these cases, it is possible that the income from their main job that is used in our final calculation has been imputed. Because of this, we set the status flags for these observations (ASCNTAMT_IRA, ASCNTAMT_401, ASCNTAMT_PEN, AECNTAMT_IRA, and AECNTAMT_401) equal to seven. This indicates that we are using a combination of reported and imputed data to determine this amount. We made this change to the status flags starting in the 2022 SIPP, which is why there are no status flags with a value of seven for these variables in the 2021 SIPP.