The variable EPENTYP measures the most important pension or retirement plan provided through one’s main employer or business during the reference period. R2PENTYP measures the second most important pension or retirement plan provided through one’s main employer or business during the reference period. There are instances where a respondent has only two retirement accounts, and both accounts are pensions. If this is the case, then EPENTYP and R2PENTYP will have a value of either three or four where three indicates a defined-benefit pension and four indicates a cash balance plan.

TSCNTAMT1 and TSCNTAMT2 measure the total amount that a respondent contributed, during the reference year, to their most, and second most, important pension or retirement plan through their main employer or business, respectively. When we ask respondents about self-contributions to their pension plans (TSCNTAMT_PEN), we only ask about the total amount contributed to all pensions during the reference period. This means that if a respondent has two retirement plans, and both plans are pensions, then TSCNTAMT1 and TSCNTAMT2 will be mechanically equal because we are unable to determine which pension the respondent contributed to.

In the 2022 SIPP, we decided to flag these cases by setting the unusually high value of 9,999,999 for TSCNTAMT1 and TSCNTAMT2. If a data user is concerned with the distinction between self-contributions to ones most important and second most important retirement plans in their analysis, we would recommend that they use caution with these specific cases. If a data user is concerned with the total amount of self-contributions made to the first and second most important retirement plans in their analysis, then we recommend they use TSCNTAMT.