Diversity, Complexity, and Change - Family and Living Arrangement Measures in the 2014 SIPP Panel

Lindsay M. Monte, U.S. Census Bureau
Jason Fields, U.S. Census Bureau
Renee Ellis, U.S. Census Bureau
Peter Mateyka, U.S. Census Bureau
Matthew C. Marlay, U.S. Census Bureau

The Census Bureau has recently reengineered the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). There are many important innovations in the new SIPP program, including Event History Calendar (EHC) assisted recall and administrative records informed imputation models. In addition to these innovations, we have significantly revised the content to improve the 2014 SIPP panel’s ability to measure family diversity, complexity, and change. The 2014 SIPP adds measures of multipartner fertility, childbearing partnerships (even in the absence of coresident children), expanded details in household relationships, parent details (nativity, date of birth, mortality) for all household members, detailed information about each residence during the year (including reasons for moving), information about between interview co-residential relationships with non-sample individuals, and more. We present the new measures of family and residential details and dynamics, and discuss some cautions prospective users should keep in mind when exploring the 2014 SIPP data.