Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP

1. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP Robert Gebeloff The New York Times rgebeloff@nytimes.com McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 0:00

2. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP ACS vs. CPS Most journalists are familiar with the American Community Survey, because it produces local data. But CPS has several advantages… McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 1:28

3. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP ACS vs. CPS CPS is more current McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 2:09

4. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP ACS vs. CPS CPS is more current -- Survey is conducted monthly, drives data on unemployment McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 2:42

5. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP ACS vs. CPS CPS is more current -- Survey is conducted monthly, drives data on unemployment -- March supplement asks additional questions that cover major demographic topics akin to ACS McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 2:51

6. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP ACS vs. CPS Links: Main CPS Page: http://www.census.gov/cps/ McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 3:05

7. CPS data demo 3:09

8. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP ACS vs. CPS Links: Main CPS Page: http://www.census.gov/cps/ Example: Income by Educational Attainment: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032010/perinc/new03_001.htm All Years: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/incpovhlth/2009/index.html McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 4:09

9. CPS data demo 4:22

10. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP ACS vs. CPS The CPS is the preferred source for national analysis … It provides the most timely and most accurate cross-section data for the nation on income and poverty and is the official source of national poverty estimates. The ACS is preferred for subnational data on income and poverty by detailed demographic characteristics, because of its large sample size. (source) McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 9:50

11. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP ACS vs. CPS CPS covers ground not covered by ACS Example: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032010/health/h06_000.htm (ACS began asking in 2008, CPS 1980) McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 10:48

12. CPS data demo 10:55

13. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP Customizing CPS vis IPUMS Thanks to the Minnesota Population Center, It’s Possible to Build Sophisticated Customized CPS Tables Example: http://cps.ipums.org/cps/sda http://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/group McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 12:03

14. Demo CPS data via IPUMS 12:24

15. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP Customizing CPS vis IPUMS -- Click on “Analyze All Samples” -- in Row, put “year” -- in Column, put “ownershp” -- in Selection Filter, put “relate(101)” For now, uncheck percentaging, color coding, and change type of chart to “no chart” Click “Run Table”… McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 12:35

16. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP Customizing CPS vis IPUMS One of the great things about the IPUMS interface is that is calculates percentages AND the standard error for you. Go back to query window and click “row percentages” and “confidence intervals” McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 16:46

17. Demo CPS data via IPUMS 17:00

18. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP Customizing CPS vis IPUMS Explore… go back again and add age(25-34) to the filter. Run table.. One more time, go back and add “sex” to the control to split the table by gender. And one more – add “nativity(5)” to the filter to limit our results to foreign born. Note how standard error grows larger as you add more nuance to your analysis McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 17:55

19. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP Customizing CPS vis IPUMS Another cool feature – you can recode or collapse variables into groups. Sticking with current example, delete age(25-34) and nativity(5) from the filter and replace sex in the control with age(c: 10, 25) McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 19:45

20. Demo CPS data via IPUMS 19:55

21. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal SIPP is potentially a rich source of story material, but it's rarely used by journalists for two primary reasons: A) It requires a fairly high level of technical skill to process the SIPP data files and B) As a longitudinal study, it requires a much different analytical approach than most Census data. McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 21:16

22. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal SIPP is a survey of about 45,000 households that is different from other surveys in several key ways. Both the annual CPS and ACS survey are "cross-sectional", in that they are based on a random sample of the population that is generate freshly every year. McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 22:49

23. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal SIPP, on the other hand, is "longitudinal", in that the SIPP sample is drawn once and then those households are re-interviewed every four months. McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 22:58

24. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal For example , CPS can tell you the unemployment rate of college graduates over time, on an annual basis. (Unemployment among college grads has jumped from X to Y between 2005 and 2010). McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 23:00

25. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal SIPP, on the other hand, tracks specific people over time. it can tell you how many college graduates went from employed to unemployment in the second half of 2008… or the percentage of new food stamp households that had previously earned more than $100,000 … or how many workers who got new jobs are earning less than they had been making in their previous job. McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 23:16

26. The Unique Value of SIPP* • To provide a nationally representative sample for evaluating: • annual and sub-annual dynamics of income • movements into and out of government transfer programs • family and social context of individuals and households • interactions between these items *Stolen from David Johnson, U.S. Census Bureau 24:02

27. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal SIPP is also a much more detailed survey -- for example, whereas CPS tracks several dozen income sources, SIPP tracks 70. SIPP also tracks a broad-array of assets beyond income, whereas most Census surveys only ask about home ownership and value. McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 24:39

28. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal The hierarchy of SIPP data is also quite different than other Census surveys. The SIPP survey is divided into "panels" and "waves". The panel is the initial sample, and can run either 3, 4 or 5 years based on both demographic and budgetary factors. We're currently in the 2008 panel and the plan is for this panel to go either 4 or five years. McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 25:30

29. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal Once the panel is drawn, the bureau surveys participants every four months, and those intervals are called waves. During each wave survey, participants are asked the series of questions and provide answers for each of the pervious four months -- for example, "Were you employed in January, Were you employed in February, etc." -- this allows for the creation of a monthly time series McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 26:10

30. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal SIPP is frequently under the budget gun, so plans don’t always match reality – possible SIPP interview frequency will be cut back, for example… McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 26:28

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32. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal SIPP incorporates sub-surveys – “topical” modules that ask additional questions about a given subject. (http://www.census.gov/sipp/top_mod/2008/topmod08.html) McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 26:53

33. Demo SIPP data 27:00

34. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal Problem for Journalists: -- 750 fields of data difficult to digest -- small community of users, mostly academic -- because SIPP is so unique, can’t always compare analysis to published tables McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 27:39

35. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal Census SIPP staff puts out their own research: http://www.census.gov/sipp/p70s/p70s.html McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 28:26

36. Demo SIPP data 28:28

37. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal Example: Dynamics of Economic Well-Being: Fluctuations in the U.S. Income Distribution, 2004–2007 (P70-124) •Approximately 12.3 million U.S. households (11.5 percent) experienced changes in their annual income between 2004 and 2007 that resulted in their moving either up or down two or more quintiles in the income distribution. •Of these 12.3 million households, approximately 2.3 million households in the bottom quintile and 2.0 million households in the second quintile experienced the largest percentage of gains in annual household income between 2004 and 2007. •Of these 12.3 million house- holds, 5.0 million households that started in the top and fourth quintiles experienced a decline of two or more quintiles between 2004 and 2007. McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 28:53

38. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal Getting started with the data? The National Bureau of Economic Research has a SIPP page (http://www.nber.org/data/survey-of-income-and-program-participation-sipp-data.html) with instructions and import specs: McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 29:33

39. Demo SIPP data 29:40

40. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal DataFerrett: http://dataferrett.census.gov/ -- get data – run (might require java update) -- enter e-mail (for saving work), get data -- See SIPP on bottom of list, pick wave 1 McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 31:09

41. Demo SIPP with DataFerrett 31:15

42. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal DataFerrett: --search for variables: rfb1r1, wpfinwgt, erace -- step 2, Databasket, make table -- Drag rfb1r1 to the first column, drag erace to the second -- Turn on weighting, get data -- Show percent of first data column McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 31:44

43. Supplement Your Reporting With CPS and SIPP SIPP: Getting Longitudinal This is just a superficial example – SIPP is very rich but would require more in-depth study to use effectively. Best starting point would be to find a source who uses it and is willing to share. McCormick SRI: Going Deep with Census Demographic and Economic Data 32:00