# Dynamics of Economic Well-being System - Progress to Date

In the past few months, substantial progress has been made on
re-engineering the SIPP. The re-engineered system, to be known as the
dynamics of economic well-being system (DEWS), is expected to continue
to meet key stakeholder data requirements while reducing respondent
burden and delivering data in a timely manner at reduced cost through a
re-engineered survey design, improvements in processing efficiency, and
a focused content scope. We are achieving these reengineering goals
while extending the existing SIPP schedule to minimize the gap between
the two programs.

Similar to the SIPP, the DEWS will provide a nationally representative
sample that can be used to evaluate the annual and sub-annual dynamics
of income, the movements into and out of government transfer programs,
the family and social context of individuals and households, and the
interactions between these items. This new system will include a new
survey instrument, which will eventually be supplemented by the use of
administrative records to assess and possibly improve data quality. To
facilitate the latter, we are developing national and state prototypes
that link current SIPP data with administrative data, a decision process
to determine how best to incorporate administrative data in concert, and
have chartered a CNSTAT panel to examine the feasibility of these
approaches.

The main component of the DEWS will consist of an annual survey
collecting data for the previous calendar year (using an event history
calendar), with content similar to data collected in the current SIPP
core survey, and that follows households for a three-year period. While
content will be more limited than in the current SIPP, additional data
can be obtained through reimbursable surveys, separate from the base
DEWS product.

The use of an event history calendar to capture sub-annual transitions
is a relatively new feature in automated demographic survey instruments.
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) conducted by the University of
Michigan, as well as the labor surveys of Statistics Canada and
Statistics Netherlands are currently using or are planning to use this
methodology, which ties life events to program participation, health
insurance, and job transitions, and enable sub-annual estimates to be
obtained in a single annual interview rather than three interviews at
four month intervals as is the current practice with SIPP. To obtain
efficient samples, which may include an over-sample for the low-income
population, the new survey sample will be selected from the American
Community Survey (ACS) interviewed cases.

In order to determine the content of the survey there have been numerous
meetings between Census staff and major stakeholders on both an
individual and large group basis (these occurred on June 8, 2006 and
August 24, 2006 and the next meeting will occur on December 18, 2006).
Matrices have been submitted to the SIPP/DEWS website with content
requirements by various major stakeholders (see
<http://www.sipp.census.gov/sipp/dews.html> for matrices and more
information on DEWS).

The current schedule for the new DEWS is to be in the field in summer of
2009, collecting data for the calendar year 2008. While this development
effort for DEWS continues, the 2004 Panel of SIPP is ongoing. Money was
allocated in the 2007 House mark for continued data collection for 2004
Panel during FY 2007. A reduced sample has been selected for continued
collection of core data for Wave 9, and will continue with Waves 10 and
11, if funding permits. The last data set of deliverables from the 2004
SIPP Panel will be released in 2007 and early 2008 (December, January,
and February for the Wave 8 topical modules). In addition, the Census
Bureau will continue to produce analytical reports evaluating the 2004
SIPP Panel.