A Guide to Disability Statistics from the Survey of Income and Program Participation

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Introduction

The primary purpose of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which is administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, is to collect information on the income and program participation of a nationally representative sample of households and individuals living in the United States. Each new fielding of the SIPP is called a "panel," and each panel includes several interviews conducted every 4 months over a period of at least 32 months. Since 1984, the Census Bureau has fielded 12 panels, including the recently completed 2001 panel. The 2001 panel includes nine interviews over four month intervals of a nationally representative sample of the 2001 U.S. population in calendar years 2001 through 2003.

The SIPP's multi-interview design allows researchers to examine a population's characteristics at a point in time ("cross-sectional analysis), as well as changes in those characteristics over time ("longitudinal analysis"). That said, the survey was intended primarily to support longitudinal analyses, as other larger cross-sectional surveys, such as the Current Population Survey (CPS) are more commonly used to generate crosssectional labor market and income statistics on an annual basis. The SIPP data are available in several formats from the Census Bureau, and most panels can be downloaded from the Census Bureau's website at www.sipp.census.gov/sipp/access.html.

Among its many advantages, the SIPP includes several questions on health, functional limitations, employment, and participation in federal disability and other cash and in-kind assistance programs. It has therefore become the basis for several recent studies of people with disabilities that have focused, for example, on employment trends, changes in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and program participation (Burkhauser, Houtenville, and Wittenburg 2003; Kruse and Schur 2003; Hotchkiss 2003; Acemoglu and Angrist 2001; McNeil 2000; DeLeire 2000).

This paper discusses the utility of the SIPP in disability analyses, including a summary of descriptive statistics on people with disabilities from multiple SIPP panels, including the most recent SIPP panel (2001). It is part of a series of papers for the Cornell Statistics Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (Cornell Stats RRTC), which is also producing user guides for the American Community Survey (ACS), the Census 2000, the 2004 Current Population Survey (CPS), the 2002 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), and the 2001 Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (PSID).

The findings provide insights into the various health, employment, income, and program participation outcomes that may be associated with different definitions of disability and illustrates the potential for using SIPP data in further disability analyses. Similar to the findings in the other user guide papers, our descriptive findings highlight the differences in the demographic composition and outcomes across disability definitions, underscoring the importance of carefully selecting an appropriate disability conceptualization in generating disability statistics. Our findings also illustrate the flexibility that the SIPP provides to generate cross-sectional and longitudinal estimates of disability prevalence and employment and program participation outcomes using single or multiple interviews from the 2001 SIPP, as well as from earlier panels using special linked files on Social Security Administration (SSA) program and earnings information that are available on a restricted basis. Despite these advantages, users should exercise caution in selecting disability definitions in producing statistics from the 2001 SIPP, as well earlier SIPP panels, because the position and wording of some disability questions (items on work limitations, for example) changes over the panel and hence, could influence the patterns observed in the data.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

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