This is the accessible text file for GAO report number GAO-03-337 
entitled 'Retirement Income Data: Improvements Could Better Support 
Analysis of Future Retirees' Prospects' which was released on March 21, 
2003.



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Report to the Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Employer-

Employee Relations, Committee on Education and the Workforce, House of 

Representatives:



United States General Accounting Office:



GAO:



March 2003:



Retirement Income Data:



Improvements Could Better Support Analysis of Future Retirees’ 

Prospects:



GAO-03-337:



GAO Highlights:



Highlights of GAO-03-337, a report to Ranking Minority Member, 

Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations, Committee on Education 

and the Workforce, House of Representatives



Why GAO Did This Study:



Future demographic trends include a doubling of the nation’s retiree 

population and only modest labor force growth, leading to concerns 

about retirement income adequacy for future generations. Credible 

projections of the effects of policy proposals on federal spending and 

future retirees’ income are necessary. Because adequate data is 

critical to the analysis of retirement income and wealth, GAO was 

asked to identify data improvements that experts say are a priority 

for the study of retirement income and wealth, as well as factors 

limiting efforts to obtain the needed information.



What GAO Found:



Experts consulted by GAO cited priorities for improving retirement 

data that fit into two broad categories: (1) obtaining better data 

from employers on employee benefits and (2) obtaining better data by 

linking more individual and household surveys with administrative data

 (such as employer records, and Social Security earnings history 

records). Information from employers, such as documents describing the 

features of their pension plans, would enable analysts to forecast 

future retirement income of pension holders, based on the specific 

features of their pension plans and the likely distribution of pension 

income and wealth for different segments of the population. Linking 

individual and household surveys with administrative data creates new 

information, such as the demographic characteristics of employees 

whose pensions are affected by the formulas that employers use to 

calculate contributions or pension payments. 



Analysts attribute the shortcomings in retirement income data 

primarily to fragmentation of the responsibility for data collection 

and analysis, the burden of data collection on respondents, and 

confidentiality considerations that restrict access to these data. 

Fragmentation of responsibility occurs, in their view, because no 

single agency has a statutory mandate to collect or to analyze all the 

data needed to support a more comprehensive study of retirement income 

and wealth. With regard to respondent burden, some information on 

pension plans is no longer collected, in part, out of concern that it 

was an unnecessary burden on the firms having to submit it. Finally, 

certain kinds of data needed to make projections are not widely 

available to all analysts because of the confidentiality laws that 

authorize their collection.



What GAO Recommends:



The Congress should consider directing Labor to obtain from plan 

administrators electronic filings of SPDs and summaries of material 

modifications and make them publicly available. In addition, GAO 

recommends that the Secretary of Labor



*direct the Bureau of Labor Statistics to prepare a plan to improve 

data for analyzing retirement income and wealth in coordination with 

other agencies and *obtain copies of summary plan descriptions in 

cases where analysts working on federally-conducted or sponsored 

research seek them for statistical purposes.



GAO recommends that the Internal Revenue Service publish tabulations 

of information filed in IRS forms 5498, 1099R and W-2.



www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-337

To view the full report, including the scope and methodology, click on 

the link above. For more information, contact Barbara Bovbjerg (202) 

512-7215 or Robert Parker (202) 512-9750.



Contents:



Letter:



Results in Brief:



Background:



Experts Cited Need for Better Data and Better Data Set Linkage:



Many Factors Limit Needed Retirement Income and Wealth Data:



Conclusions:



Matter for Congressional Consideration:



Recommendations:



Agency Comments:



Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:



Appendix II: Status of Recommendations from the 1997 Report

of the Panel on Retirement Income Modeling:



Appendix III: GAO Survey on Retirement Income Data Needs and

List of Respondents:



List of Respondents to the Survey:



Appendix IV: Views of GAO’s Expert Panel on Retirement Income Data 
Needs:



Need for Better Matched Data:



More Employer Information Needed on the Value and Provisions of 

Employer Provided Pensions:



Appendix V: Characteristics of Selected Surveys for Analysis of 

Retirement Income and Wealth:



Appendix VI: Comments from the Department of Commerce:



Appendix VII: Comments from the Department of Labor:



Appendix VIII: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:



GAO Contacts:



Staff Acknowledgments:



Tables:



Table 1: Examples of Federal Agency Retirement Income-Related Data 

Collection:



Table 2: Federal Outlays for Selected Longitudinal Studies--Fiscal 

Years 1997-2001:



Table 3: Summary Table of Selected Survey Data Sources:



Abbreviations:



BLS: Bureau of Labor Statistics

CPS: Current Population Survey:

EBRI: Employee Benefit Research Institute

EBSA: Employee Benefits Security Administration

ERISA: Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974

HRS: Health and Retirement Study:

IRA: Individual Retirement Account

IRS: Internal Revenue Service:

OMB: Office of Management and Budget

PBGC: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

PSID: Panel Study of Income Dynamics

SCF: Survey of Consumer Finances:

SIPP: Survey of Income and Program Participation

SPD: summary plan description

SOI: Statistics of Income:



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United States General Accounting Office:



Washington, DC 20548:



March 21, 2003:



The Honorable Robert E. Andrews

Ranking Minority Member

Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations

Committee on Education and the Workforce

House of Representatives:



Dear Mr. Andrews:



The nation’s retiree population will double within the next few 

decades, while at the same time the labor force will grow only 

modestly, potentially stressing the national economy. In light of these 

demographic trends, policymakers have been moved to consider how the 

future economy can support the large retiree population, and whether 

retirement income levels will be adequate in the future.[Footnote 1] To 

increase their understanding about issues related to retirement, 

policymakers need credible projections of the effects of their 

proposals on federal spending and on future retirees’ income. Analysts 

will be better able to develop accurate projections if they have 

relevant, reliable, and timely data on patterns of saving and actual 

retirement income and wealth.



Because adequate data will be so important to analysis of retirement 

income and wealth for future retirees, including people in the “baby 

boom” generation and later generations, you asked us to assess the 

adequacy of data available for making such projections. In response to 

your request, as agreed, we identified (1) data improvements that 

experts say are a priority for the study of retirement income and 

wealth and (2) factors limiting efforts to obtain the needed 

information.



To address these topics, we conducted a Web based survey of nearly 200 

individuals with retirement income expertise, held a daylong meeting 

with a diverse group of 11 retirement income experts, and interviewed 

retirement income analysts and officials of the Departments of Labor 

(Labor), Commerce, and Treasury. We conducted our work between February 

and December 2002 in accordance with generally accepted government 

auditing standards. (For more details about our scope and methodology, 

see app. I.):



Results in Brief:



Acknowledging that there is a great deal of missing data related to 

retirement income, experts we consulted cited priorities for data 

improvements that fit into two broad categories: (1) obtaining better 

data from employers on employee benefits and (2) obtaining better data 

by linking more individual and household surveys with administrative 

data (such as employer records and Social Security earnings history 

records). The kinds of information from employers that analysts 

indicated are missing included the documents employers provide to 

employees describing the features of their pension plans, such as the 

plan’s normal retirement age and reductions for early retirement. This 

information would help analysts to forecast future retirement income of 

pension holders, based on the specific features of their pension plans 

and the likely distribution of pension income and wealth for different 

segments of the population. With regard to linking datasets, currently 

linkages between individual and household survey data and 

administrative data are limited. Linking data creates new information 

by matching survey data about individuals (using names, or taxpayer 

identification numbers) to a second set of records, such as 

administrative records on pension plans. There is inadequate 

information, for example, about which demographic groups have different 

types of pensions. Thus, while analysts may know the prevalence of 

certain formulas used to calculate employer contributions or pension 

payments, they generally lack reliable information about the 

demographic characteristics of the employees whose pensions are 

affected by these formulas.



Analysts attribute the shortcomings in retirement income data primarily 

to fragmentation of the responsibility for data collection and 

analysis, the burden of data collection on respondents, and 

confidentiality considerations that restrict access to these data. 

Fragmentation of responsibility occurs, in their view, because no 

single agency has a statutory mandate to collect or to analyze all the 

data needed to support a more comprehensive study of retirement income 

and wealth. For example, while the Department of Labor’s Bureau of 

Labor Statistics (BLS) collects data on pensions, and the Census Bureau 

collects data on individuals’ and households’ income, neither agency is 

responsible for all of the data needed to project future retirement 

income and wealth. Other agencies such as the Department of Labor’s 

Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA)--formerly called the 

Pension Welfare and Benefits Administration--and the Social Security 

Administration also collect data, but the extent to which these 

agencies share data is limited. With regard to respondent burden, some 

information on pension plans is no longer collected out of concern that 

it was an unnecessary burden on the firms having to submit it, as well 

as concern about the Department of Labor’s costs for storing the 

information. For example, the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act (P.L. 105-34) 

ended the requirement that employers file with the Department of Labor 

copies of documents summarizing the features of the pension plans they 

offer. Finally, certain kinds of data needed to make projections are 

not widely available to all analysts because of the confidentiality 

laws that authorize their collection. The Census Bureau and others are 

exploring options for expanding access without compromising the 

confidentiality of the data. For example, the Census Bureau has 

established additional research data centers throughout the country 

where approved researchers with approved projects can work with 

confidential data and produce statistical summaries that meet strict 

disclosure requirements.



We are offering a Matter for Congressional Consideration and making 

recommendations to the Department of Labor and the Department of the 

Treasury that seek cost-effective approaches to help fill some of the 

data needs while taking into account respondent concerns about 

increased reporting burdens and agency concerns about maintaining 

confidentiality.



We provided a draft of this report to the Departments of Commerce, 

Labor, the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). We received 

technical comments from all four and incorporated their suggestions as 

appropriate. We also provided a draft of this report to the 11 members 

of our expert panel and modified the draft as appropriate in response 

to their comments. Commerce had no major comments on the report (see 

app. VI). Labor agreed on the need for access to accurate data but did 

not agree with our recommendations to the Secretary of Labor (see app. 

VII). Labor indicated that it did not have authority to require that 

summary plan descriptions (SPD) be filed electronically. Accordingly, 

we changed one of our draft recommendations to the Secretary of Labor 

into a Matter for Congressional Consideration. Labor also had concerns 

about the burdens our recommendations might pose. Although we 

acknowledge their concerns, nonetheless, we conclude that the need for 

improvements in retirement income data outweighs the likely costs 

involved. We therefore continue to address two recommendations to the 

Secretary of Labor and one to the IRS.



Background:



Forecasting future retirement income needs--and how well they will be 

met through current savings, pension plans, and Social Security 

benefits--is a challenge, in part because of the many variables 

involved. Although Social Security is the primary source of income for 

many retirees, private pensions and other sources of income serve as 

key supplements and help retirees receive adequate income in 

retirement. In order to measure a person’s current income and wealth, 

information is needed about many items, including the person’s wage and 

nonwage income, home equity, pension, and nonfinancial assets and 

liabilities. In addition, to project a person’s future income and 

wealth, researchers need information such as a person’s earnings 

history, whether he or she chooses to participate in the pension plan 

offered by an employer, and how the person might respond to changing 

incentives for saving and investing for retirement. Other factors 

include whether the person chooses to accumulate savings apart from 

retirement plans, how long the person remains in one job, whether the 

person decides to cash out his or her retirement plan when changing 

employment, level of indebtedness, and the availability of health 

insurance during retirement. In addition, individuals’ retirement funds 

depend on employer decisions, such as what kinds of pension plans and 

the availability and cost of retiree medical and long-term care 

insurance. To make estimates for people in different demographic 

groups, not just aggregate estimates for entire generations, analysts 

need to know how these factors vary based on individuals’ demographic 

characteristics. Estimates of future income adequacy also rely heavily 

on projections of macroeconomic factors, including estimates of future 

rates of inflation, and rates of return on stocks and bonds and changes 

in home values. Furthermore, retirement income data needs keep 

changing, in part, as a result of trends in the pension industry and 

the labor force. The pension industry provides a growing variety of 

pension products with different features and legal structures. 

Forecasting pension income becomes more complicated with, for example, 

firms’ converting of traditional pension plans into new pension hybrid 

products such as cash balance plans. These plans combine features of 

both defined benefit[Footnote 2] and defined contribution[Footnote 3] 

plans, which adds to their complexity.[Footnote 4] Changes in 

employment patterns, such as the decrease in the length of time 

employees spend in a single job, will also have an effect on pension 

income.



The federal government collects a great deal of data pertinent to the 

analysis of retirement income and wealth. Surveys of individuals and 

households collected by or sponsored by the Census Bureau, the Federal 

Reserve Board, BLS, and the National Institute on Aging are important 

sources of information. Similarly, surveys of businesses by BLS provide 

information about the pension and health care benefits firms offer 

their employees. A great deal more information pertinent to the 

analysis of retirement income and wealth is contained in the 

administrative documents that businesses and individuals must provide 

to state and federal agencies that administer governmental programs and 

enforce regulations. For example, many private employers must file, on 

a Form 5500, annual reports concerning their employee benefit plans for 

the IRS, Labor’s EBSA, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation 

(PBGC).[Footnote 5] Many pieces of information concerning pensions and 

retirement savings are also provided on forms that employers and 

financial institutions file with the IRS.



In addition to the federal government’s collection of retirement income 

related data, several private entities also conduct surveys that 

provide useful information concerning retirement income. For example, 

the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) conducted by the University of 

Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, is a longitudinal survey of 

adults over the age of 50. The information collected includes such 

topics as respondents’ physical and mental health, insurance coverage, 

financial status, family support systems, labor market status, and 

retirement planning. The HRS is supported primarily by the National 

Institute on Aging, with additional funding over the years from the 

Social Security Administration, Labor’s EBSA, the Department of Health 

and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and 

the state of Florida. Also, private benefit consulting firms and 

organizations, such as the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), 

conduct surveys of employers concerning pension plans.



Retirement income analysts currently use available retirement income 

and wealth data to project future retirement income needs. For example, 

the Social Security Administration has developed a forecasting model, 

Modeling Income in the Near Term (MINT), to project demographic 

changes, retirement income, and Social Security benefits generally for 

persons born between 1931 and 1960. The Congressional Budget Office has 

also developed the Congressional Budget Office Long-Term model to study 

the range of possible outcomes for the balance of the Social Security 

trust fund.[Footnote 6]



In a 1997 report, the National Research Council’s Panel on Retirement 

Income Modeling reviewed the available sources of data on retirement 

income and recommended several improvements.[Footnote 7] While the 

individual recommendations covered various topics, many involved the 

collection of additional information, as well as the establishment of 

an interagency task force for coordination purposes. While some of the 

panel’s recommendations have been adopted, others have not. For 

example, as the panel recommended, the federal government has continued 

to support longitudinal studies. However, Labor has not acted on the 

panel’s recommendation that it establish an interagency task force on 

employer data to plan collection of retirement income related data. In 

some respects, less data are available than was the case when the 

report was prepared. (See app. II for details.):



Much of the data needed to assess retirement income and wealth are 

subject to federal laws protecting the confidentiality of information 

reported to the federal government. Laws limit the access to this 

information. Without access, it is not possible to pull together data 

from different sources to provide more complete information about 

individuals or organizations. The success of data gathering efforts by 

federal agencies and others relies on widespread trust that personal 

data will be kept confidential, protected from disclosure, and used 

only for specified purposes.[Footnote 8]



Experts Cited Need for Better Data and Better Data Set Linkage:



Experts we consulted cited priorities for improving retirement data 

that fit into two broad categories: (1) obtaining better data from 

employers on employee benefits and (2) obtaining better data from 

individual and household surveys by linking them with administrative 

data. The kinds of information concerning employers and employer-

sponsored benefit plans that analysts sought included the features of 

their pension plans, such as minimum and maximum allowable 

contributions, or formulas for calculating benefits from defined 

benefit pension plans. Retirement income experts believed these data 

would allow them to more accurately measure or project retirement 

income and wealth now and in the future and estimate effects of 

potential retirement policy changes. Linkage of data from different 

sources creates new information by providing data about individuals 

matched to other data about the individuals from a second set of 

records, such as administrative records on pension plans. Analysts are 

able to use general data on some employer-sponsored pension plans and 

data on households and individuals. However, without linkages between 

these types of data it is difficult to obtain information about 

retirement offerings for specific households. As a result, analysis of 

pension offerings by demographic groups is limited.



Experts Place Priority on Improvement in Data from Employers:



Most of the experts responding to our survey on retirement income data 

needs assigned better retirement income-related data from employers to 

the high or highest priority category. (See app. III for results of the 

survey.) In addition, the experts asserted that employers, rather than 

employees, could provide more accurate information about pension plans. 

Participants on our expert panel expressed interest in improving access 

to the mandatory pension plan disclosure reports, such as summary plan 

descriptions (SPD). (See app. IV for a summary of the expert panel’s 

discussion.) Employers must provide these documents to employees who 

participate in a plan (such as a pension plan) in order to provide them 

with an understandably written description of their rights and benefits 

under the plan. To improve projections of future retirement income and 

the effects of policy options, panelists also expressed interest in 

data provided to the IRS on forms such as 1099-R and 5498.[Footnote 9]



Employer Documents Are an Important Source of Information on Retirement 

Plans:



Analysts responding to our survey, reported as their highest or high 

priority, the kind of information reported on some employer-submitted 

forms. Because pension plans vary widely, panel experts said they 

especially needed details of employee pension plans, such as the type 

of pension plan (defined benefit, defined contribution, or other), 

eligibility for participation and benefits, the plan’s early retirement 

age, sources of contributions to the plan, and the method by which the 

amount of the contributions and benefits are calculated. Panelists 

believed this information would help analysts project future private 

pension benefits and the effects of proposed policy changes. Panel 

members also recommended that such pension data be obtained directly 

from employers, citing the need for accuracy as an important factor.



Inconsistencies have been found between employee and employer provided 

data. One study, for example, compared employees’ reports concerning 

the employer-sponsored pension plans they were participating in, or 

that were available to them, with the information about those pension 

plans obtained directly from the employers.[Footnote 10] It found 

significant discrepancies between the two sets of data, large enough 

for the authors to urge a great deal of caution in using the household 

survey data for reliable information about the actual characteristics 

of employer-sponsored pension plans. For example, among employees whose 

employers reported that they were covered by a defined benefit plan, 

only 56 percent of the employees thought that they had such a plan. 

Likewise, there seemed to be high levels of error in other basic 

details about pension plans, such as the eligibility date for early 

retirement.



Using employer-submitted forms as a source of information was suggested 

as one way to increase the accuracy of pension data. Retirement income 

experts agreed that the Form 5500 is an important source of pension 

information available in government administrative records.[Footnote 

11] Sponsors or administrators of employee benefit plans subject to 

ERISA[Footnote 12] must file this form annually. The Form 5500 was 

intended, in part, to measure employers’ compliance with both the 

fiduciary and funding provisions laid out in ERISA legislation. The 

Form 5500 filed for pension plans contains useful aggregate information 

about plans. It provides information about the financial condition of 

the plan, annual amounts contributed by participants, and the plan’s 

income on investments. The form also provides information on plan 

characteristics, such as plan type (defined benefit or defined 

contribution), method of funding, and numbers of employees, 

participants, and employees who are excluded from the plan for various 

reasons.



While the Form 5500 provides aggregate data about plans, it does not 

contain information useful for calculating individual’s contributions 

or benefits. For example, it does not provide information on formulas 

for calculating employer contributions to plans or for calculating 

retirees’ benefits.[Footnote 13] In addition, it does not provide any 

data for pension plans outside the reporting requirements of ERISA, 

such as those for governmental employers, certain nonqualified plans 

for highly compensated people,[Footnote 14] simplified employee pension 

(SEP) [Footnote 15] plans, or savings incentive match plans for 

employees (SIMPLE).[Footnote 16] Reporting and processing requirements 

also mean that data from Form 5500 reports may not be available to 

researchers for up to 3 years after the plan year. Finally, Labor 

officials find frequent errors in information submitted on the 

forms.[Footnote 17]



Partly because of the limitations surrounding the Form 5500s, 

retirement income experts are increasingly interested in access to the 

SPDs, which are summaries of employers’ pension offerings. The 

requirements of ERISA call for SPDs to include specific details about 

employee pension plans, including the type of pension plan, eligibility 

requirements, normal retirement age, vesting[Footnote 18] and 

disqualification rules, sources of contributions to the plan, and 

method by which the amount of the contribution is calculated. ERISA 

required employers to file SPDs and documents, called “summaries of 

material modifications,” describing changes to the plans with Labor. 

These were made publicly available at Labor’s public disclosure room in 

Washington, D.C. The SPDs served many purposes: (1) they were a source 

of information to employees about the offerings included in their own 

pension plans, (2) they were a means of informing Labor about what 

types of plans a company was offering so Labor could perform monitoring 

and enforcement, (3) they also provided researchers with a high level 

of detail on pension offerings. EBSA officials noted, however, that the 

SPDs received by Labor were often out of date and that it was costly to 

store them. In 1993 we agreed that Labor should stop collecting paper 

copies of SPDs, and instead provide access to electronic 

versions.[Footnote 19]



Labor no longer collects SPDs and public access to them has become much 

more limited in the last 5 years. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (P.L. 

105-34) amended ERISA so that employers no longer need to file SPDs 

with Labor. Instead, Labor was authorized to request SPDs from 

employers as needed, and uses this authority primarily to assist plan 

participants and beneficiaries in obtaining copies, though it has 

authority to request them for other purposes. However, since the law, 

Labor no longer requires that SPDs be filed, and SPDs prepared after 

the Taxpayer Relief Act are not publicly accessible, either for the 

general public or for researchers looking to model pension behavior.



Tax Information Returns Are a Source of Information on Retirement 

Plans:



Our expert panelists noted that some of the pension details they need 

can be found in the administrative data provided by employers and 

others to the IRS. In addition to its collection of income tax returns, 

the IRS also collects “information” returns, such as the W-2, which 

contain details of employee information that provides valuable details 

relevant to future retirement income, such as wages, tax-deferred 

retirement contributions, lump sum distributions, rollovers, and 

retirement asset balances. In discussing pension data that the IRS has 

access to from its tax forms, experts from our panel reported that 

information from the Forms W-2, 5498, or 1099-R could provide important 

pension details. These forms provide detail on the extent of 

investments in retirement plans, such as the amount of contributions 

made to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) or the amount of money 

contributed by the employee to deferred compensation plans.[Footnote 

20]



Form W-2 is a valuable source of pension data because it provides 

information on whether the employer provides some form of qualified 

retirement plan. The W-2 also includes amounts deducted from wages for 

contributions to pension plans, as well as codes that provide more 

detail on the different kinds of plans to which the contribution was 

made, such as whether the plan is a SIMPLE, SEP, or some other kind of 

deferred compensation plan. Besides giving more detailed information on 

deferred compensation, the W-2 has another advantage in terms of the 

pension information it provides: employers are required to submit one 

for every employee. This requirement covers all workers for whom 

federal income tax or Social Security tax is withheld, including those 

who do not earn enough to be required to file individual income tax 

returns and those who are not covered by any pension plan.



Form 5498 is a form that financial institutions are required to file 

for all participants to report all contributions and the fair market 

value of their IRA accounts. It includes valuable pension information, 

including IRA contributions; rollover contributions;[Footnote 21] and 

SEP, SIMPLE, and Roth IRA contributions.[Footnote 22] Experts from the 

panel stated that the pension information from Form 5498 could be 

important in tracking an individual’s retirement income balance with a 

specific custodial financial institution because it provides 

information on the fair market value of those assets held by the 

individual. While it does not give information on whether an employee 

who has separated from an employer converts the IRA into another tax 

protected IRA or pension account, this information should be reflected 

in the employee’s federal income tax return.



Form 1099-R is another source of information for pension experts, which 

could provide additional information on pension resources. Form 1099-R 

is a statement filed by trustees concerning distributions to 

individuals from pensions, annuities, retirement or Profit-Sharing 

Plans, and IRAs. However, in many cases the form does not indicate 

whether the distributions are lump-sum distributions or rollovers into 

IRAs or other qualified plans.



The IRS makes some tax information publicly available through its 

Statistics of Income (SOI) program, which provides numerous tabulations 

and articles from its analysis of tax return data. From a sample of 

Form 1040s, the SOI currently provides aggregate tabulations of 

information, including taxable IRA distributions, deductible payments 

to an IRA, payments to a self-employed retirement (Keogh) plan, and 

taxable pensions and annuities.[Footnote 23] This information is 

provided as a sum total of amounts accrued for the entire U.S. 

population that filed income tax returns, and is also broken out in 

detail by income level. For example, for the year 2000, the SOI 

provides taxable IRA distributions for about 9 million returns, with 

distributions totaling about $100 billion. While SOI breaks down these 

totals by income brackets, the tables do not provide other useful 

pension information such as pension accrual amounts by race or 

ethnicity. These demographic characteristics could be added to the data 

if individual tax return records were linked to the Census Bureau’s 

detailed household survey records.



The SOI staff are preparing an article on retirement related data 

available from the IRS and, in doing so, will make some retirement 

related aggregate data, including information from Forms 5498 and W-2, 

publicly available for the first time. They told us that they are 

considering making this information available as a part of regular SOI 

releases, but they currently have no formal plans to do so. The SOI 

tabulations being prepared include the fair market value of pension 

plans, broken down by 10-year cohorts. Our expert panelists said that 

these kinds of aggregate data from IRS forms could help them ensure 

that their analyses reflect accurate information about retirement 

assets, such as the fair market value of IRA accounts.



Experts Place Priority on Linking Data on Individuals to Administrative 

Data:



Given different possible options for improving retirement income data, 

retirement experts showed the greatest interest in increasing the 

availability of, and expanding researchers’ access to, data sets on 

individuals or households linked to administrative data sets. (For 

characteristics of selected survey data sources, see table 3.) Eighty-

one percent of respondents assigned this as a high or highest priority. 

Data linkage creates new information by matching data about individuals 

(using names or taxpayer identification numbers) to a second set of 

records, such as administrative records on pension plans, which provide 

additional information. The linked data are then preserved as a new 

data set, with personal identification information removed, that can 

generate new, fuller information on the population. Linking existing 

sources of data can provide detailed information with no additional 

respondent burden and at a much lower cost than is associated with 

collecting new survey data.



Our expert panelists made several suggestions for linking individual 

and household survey data with administrative data sources to help 

improve the analysis of retirement income and projections of the 

effects of policy changes on future retirement income. For example, 

they suggested expanding linkage between the Survey of Income and 

Program Participation (SIPP) and administrative data sources.[Footnote 

24] SIPP is a survey of households conducted by the Census Bureau 

providing wide-ranging demographic information, including different 

age cohorts, which makes it an attractive source of information when 

linked to administrative records. It provides, for example, information 

about benefits households receive from government programs. One 

component of this survey deals with retirement and pension plan 

coverage, in which several pension and retirement related questions are 

asked. However, it lacks definitive information on features of 

respondents’ pension plans. Linking SIPP information to administrative 

data sets is a powerful way to expand information about how different 

groups will be covered in retirement. For example, linked data sets can 

indicate the extent to which the availability of various pension 

features differ for people in different age and demographic groups. 

Such linkage can also indicate how much knowledge respondents have 

about their pension plans and their retirement savings options. 

Panelists said that linkage to SPDs, Form 5500 data, and Social 

Security earnings and benefit histories would be especially valuable 

for projecting retirement income for different demographic groups.



Survey data on individuals have already been linked to administrative 

data sources in order to improve retirement income data. The Census 

Bureau is already linking SIPP records with administrative data related 

to retirement income, including Social Security earnings and benefit 

records. However, many potential linkages are hampered by lack of 

access to needed administrative data. For example, the University of 

Michigan Institute for Social Research has linked information gathered 

from HRS survey participants to SPDs gathered either from the employers 

or by Labor prior to 1997. Unfortunately, this process was made more 

difficult, and the information less satisfactory, because the HRS 

researchers could only obtain about 50 percent of the SPDs they were 

seeking, in part, because employers chose not to provide the SPDs. HRS 

researchers have also experimented with linking respondent surveys to 

Social Security earning histories for two-thirds of the respondents who 

permitted SSA to provide the records.



Many Factors Limit Needed Retirement Income and Wealth Data:



Experts we consulted believed that data needed for the study of 

retirement income are not collected or made available because of 

factors that include the fragmentation of data collection 

responsibility, the burden of data collection on respondents, and 

confidentiality considerations that restrict access. Fragmentation 

stems from no single agency having a statutory mandate to collect and 

analyze all the data needed to support a more comprehensive study of 

retirement income and wealth. Some information is no longer collected 

out of concern that it was an unnecessary burden on the firms having to 

submit it and because it was only being used to a limited extent by the 

government. Finally, certain kinds of data needed to make retirement 

income projections are not made available because they contain 

information that must by law be carefully protected against 

unauthorized disclosure and misuse.



Fragmented Retirement Data Responsibilities Contributes to Data 

Shortcomings:



Although many federal agencies are involved in collecting and analyzing 

retirement income and wealth data for a variety of different purposes, 

no single agency is responsible for these activities. Instead, some 

agencies--including the Bureau of the Census, Labor, Federal Reserve 

Board, IRS, and SSA--collect data needed for their specific purposes. 

For example, the Census Bureau collects retirement income and wealth 

information on individuals and households using the Current Population 

Survey (CPS) and SIPP. Labor collects data on pensions for both ERISA 

enforcement purposes and to track pensions for statistical purposes. 

The IRS collects data from individuals and firms for tax enforcement 

purposes. Table 1 shows the major agencies involved in retirement 

income and wealth data collection, the purpose of their data 

collection, and a brief description of the information collected. None 

of these agencies is charged with coordinating all retirement income 

data collection efforts or planning improvements needed in data 

collection and analysis.



Table 1: Examples of Federal Agency Retirement Income-Related Data 

Collection:



Agency: Census Bureau; (Department of Commerce); Data collection 

program: Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP); Purpose of 

data collection: Provide information about income and government 

program participation; Examples of data collected: -Work experience; -

Earnings; -Program participation; -Benefits received; -Property 

Income; -Demographic characteristics.



Agency: Bureau of Labor Statistics; (Department of Labor); Data 

collection program: National Compensation Survey; Purpose of data 

collection: Provide information on wages salaries and benefits; 

Examples of data collected: -Occupational earnings; -Compensation 

trends; -Benefits offered; -Benefit participation; -Detailed plan 

provisions.



Agency: Employee Benefits Security Administration; (Department of 

Labor); Data collection program: Form 5500; Purpose of data collection: 

Enforce ERISA pension requirements; Examples of data collected: -Type 

of plan; -Number of employees; -Number of participants; -Plan 

amendments; -Plan financial position; -Actuarial assumptions; -

Employer & employee contributions.



Agency: Social Security Administration; Data collection program: SSA 

earnings and benefit records; Purpose of data collection: Administer 

the Social Security benefit programs; Examples of data collected: -

Earnings histories; -Social Security benefit histories; -Supplemental 

Security Income benefit histories.



Agency: Internal Revenue Service; (Department of the Treasury); Data 

collection program: IRS tax records; Purpose of data collection: 

Administer/enforce the tax code; Examples of data collected: -IRS 

individual 1040 returns; -IRS Information returns; -Account balances; -

Withdrawals.



Source: GAO’s analysis of data from the U .S. Census Bureau, the U.S. 

Department of Labor, Social Security Administration, and the U.S. 

Treasury Department.



[End of table]



Agencies involved in the analysis of retirement income and wealth data 

often limit their analysis to a portion of the retirement income and 

wealth information. Panel members noted that many of the agencies place 

little or no priority on a comprehensive analysis of retirement income 

and wealth data. Instead, agencies focus their data collection and 

analysis on data needed to address their mission. For example, Labor’s 

EBSA collects information on compliance with ERISA regulations, 

including Form 5500 submissions. Although EBSA’s strategic plan 

includes retirement income data analysis efforts, its principal focus 

is on enforcement of ERISA. Similarly, the Bureau of the Census 

collects retirement related information in the SIPP and other surveys 

but its analysis of this information is primarily in the context of its 

income and poverty measurement mission. The SSA’s MINT model uses an 

estimate of workers’ pensions based on SIPP data from the Census 

Bureau, which generally relies on survey responses, has been criticized 

for using inaccurate estimates of nonearnings income, including 

retirement income. Because the Census Bureau data provided to the SSA 

for the MINT was not gathered with it in mind or coordinated for its 

use, the MINT model has had to use simplifications and assumptions of 

these data which makes its final model less useful for policy 

makers.[Footnote 25]



Despite this fragmentation, some agencies have attempted to increase 

communication between federal agencies concerning data collection 

efforts related to retirement income. For example, the BLS’ strategic 

goals include improving the accuracy, efficiency, and relevancy of U.S. 

economic statistics and enhancing coordination with other agencies. The 

Census Bureau’s strategic goals likewise include an emphasis on 

providing accurate, timely, and accessible information on the U.S. 

population and economy, and to maintain relationships with agencies 

compiling administrative record data. Both the Census Bureau and the 

BLS are members of the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging Related 

Statistics,[Footnote 26] which has a goal of improving both the quality 

and the use of aging related data. In addition, BLS is one of three 

agencies that share responsibility for leading the Inter-Departmental 

Committee on Employment-Related Health Insurance Surveys. This 

committee of a dozen members was created in 1998 to improve 

coordination and reduce respondent burden by reducing redundant 

requests for information.



Respondent Burden Considerations Limit Available Data:



Members of our expert panel reported that respondent burden, as well as 

requirements set up to limit respondent burden, could hinder agencies’ 

efforts to obtain retirement-related information. Panel members noted 

that answering survey questions about retirement income and wealth 

could be a substantial burden on respondents. They acknowledged that 

asking for too much information could result in partial responses, 

erroneous responses, or, in some cases, a reduction in the overall 

response rate.



However, efforts to reduce respondent burden may also limit the 

collection of retirement information. Legislation requires OMB to 

review surveys before they are used to collect data. The Paperwork 

Reduction Act of 1995 (P.L. 104-13) and similar previous 

legislation[Footnote 27] is designed to minimize the paperwork burden 

on the public while at the same time recognize the importance of 

information to the successful completion of agency missions. The act 

requires OMB to approve all existing and new collections of information 

by federal agencies. In approving agency collection efforts, OMB must 

weigh the burden to the public against the practical utility of the 

information to the agency. Panel members noted that agencies were 

reluctant to propose additional data collection unless they could 

clearly establish that the benefit outweighed the perceived burden. 

Panel members noted that efforts to reduce existing data collection 

requirements sometimes result in a loss of information. For example, 

the 1997 elimination of the requirement that firms routinely submit 

SPDs was connected to an effort to reduce the respondent burden on 

employers.



Privacy and Confidentiality Concerns Limit the Collection and Use of 

Retirement Data:



While restrictions on the collection and use of retirement data are 

critical for the protection of personal information, some panel members 

noted that these restrictions also limit the availability of such 

information. Several laws exist to protect individuals’ rights to 

privacy and protect the confidentiality of personal and proprietary 

information held by federal agencies. For example, laws set strict 

requirements to protect data collected by the Census Bureau and to 

limit the use of taxpayer data.[Footnote 28]



Implementing such laws requires federal agencies to restrict access to 

data they collect. For example, the Census Bureau’s data set that links 

the SIPP with earnings and benefit records from SSA is not available to 

the public. Protecting the confidentiality of such linked data sets is 

particularly crucial because linked data sets may be more detailed or 

more sensitive than the component data sets were before they were 

linked. Agency officials must remove personal identifiers such as 

Social Security numbers, names, and addresses. Even without these 

personal identifiers, as more and more information is linked, the risks 

that individuals could be identified increases. The computer files for 

these nonpublic data sets are available only at a limited number of 

secure research data centers to approved analysts working on approved 

projects.[Footnote 29] Outside analysts working with these data sets 

must be sworn Census Bureau officers and their work must serve, at 

least in part, to support the Census Bureau’s mission. If analysts 

permitted to use these data combine any other data with the restricted 

data, the combined data are subject to the Title 13 protections. 

Analysts are not allowed to make copies of the data or remove data from 

the secure data center.[Footnote 30] Before taking any of the results 

of their work from the center, Census Bureau staff must review the 

results to ensure that they meet the agency’s requirements for 

confidentiality protection. Thus, the results that can be taken out of 

the center are limited to statistical results that do not disclose data 

for specific individuals. Also, the external researchers must agree 

that the results of their work will be available in the public domain 

and not maintained as proprietary information.



However, despite the government’s efforts to protect the information 

they collect from misuse, surveys of the public and Census Bureau 

interviewers indicate that people are apprehensive about the 

government’s use of personal information. In a survey conducted both 

before and after (or just prior to) the 2000 Census of Population and 

Housing, about half of the respondents (51 percent before and 50 

percent during) indicated they thought the Census Bureau’s promise of 

confidentiality could be trusted, down from about 79 percent in 1990. A 

smaller, but still substantial proportion of the workers conducting 

census interviews and providing those promises to respondents also 

indicated a lack of trust in the Census Bureau’s assurances. A 1998 

study indicated that 16.7 percent of Census Bureau interviewers and 

32.2 percent of non-Census Bureau interviewers believed that the Bureau 

would give individual survey data to government agencies such as the 

Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the 

Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the IRS. Federal law 

prohibits the Census Bureau from sharing information about individuals 

with these agencies. Census Bureau information about particular 

individuals or businesses is only available for statistical purposes, 

not for law enforcement purposes.



Public distrust of federal agencies’ use of their personal information 

can undermine people’s willingness to participate in federal surveys, 

potentially making the information collected less reliable.[Footnote 

31] An article in the Journal of Official Statistics noted that in the 

1990s the rate at which people refused to participate had risen for six 

surveys conducted by the Census Bureau.[Footnote 32] For questions 

about types of income in the March 1999 CPS survey, for example, the 

percentage of respondents providing data for particular items ranged 

from 33 percent to 78 percent. Low response rates can undermine 

analysts’ statistical projections if the individuals who choose not to 

respond differ in important respects from those who provide data. If 

the remaining respondents are dissimilar to the population being 

surveyed, conclusions about the population may not be reliable. For 

example, if those who chose not to respond have higher incomes, 

estimates of the populations’ income may not be reliable. Statisticians 

make adjustments that can mitigate this problem, but the lower response 

rates are, the more uncertainties remain.



Federal agencies and researchers continue to explore options to 

maximize data usefulness without compromising respondent privacy and 

confidentiality.[Footnote 33] For example, the Census Bureau has 

received permission from the IRS to link the survey records to 

additional items from IRS and SSA records.[Footnote 34] In addition, 

the Census Bureau has recently increased the number of its research 

data centers where approved analysts working on approved projects can 

access confidential data.



Researchers continue to explore statistical techniques for providing 

more information from survey data sets while reducing the risks that 

confidential information will be compromised. One well-known technique 

for doing this, “top coding,” involves reporting in data files only 

that an individual respondent’s income, for example, exceeds the “top 

code” amount, not the actual value. In this way, so many individuals 

are included in the high-income group that their identities cannot be 

determined. More sophisticated techniques include the use of methods to 

substitute artificial records containing estimated values based on 

knowledge of the real data. These simulated subjects are assigned 

number values selected to ensure that relationships between important 

variables are preserved. This allows people to remain anonymous to the 

researchers using the data. However, pension experts state that this 

method can only accommodate certain kinds of variables and, therefore, 

complex relationships between variables may not be maintained. 

[Footnote 35]



Recent legislation may enable the Census Bureau and BLS to link their 

data on businesses for statistical purposes. In December 2002, the 

Congress enacted the Confidential Information Protection and 

Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 as part of the E-Government Act of 

2002 (P.L. 107-347). This act permits designated statistical agencies 

to share information concerning businesses for statistical purposes, 

but not information concerning individuals or households. It authorizes 

three agencies--the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and 

BLS--to share data on businesses with one another for statistical 

purposes.



Conclusions:



With the proportion of retirees to workers expected to increase 

dramatically over the next couple of decades, important decisions lie 

ahead. Access to retirement income data needed to inform those 

decisions has actually decreased in some respects, despite the 

recommendations of the 1997 National Research Council’s Panel on 

Retirement Income Modeling. Although many sources of useful retirement 

income data remain, retirement analysts we consulted cited 

shortcomings. They noted, for example, that data shortcomings persist 

when no one federal agency is responsible for coordinating efforts to 

fill retirement income data needs.



Indeed, several such data needs could be met with information the 

federal government already possesses or to which it already has access. 

For example, Labor has the authority to obtain existing documents 

describing the features of private pension plans. However, though it 

has this authority, it gives employers in its National Compensation 

Survey a choice about whether to provide them to support Labor’s BLS 

statistical studies of pension plans. To encourage voluntary 

participation in the survey, Labor does not make them available to 

other agencies, outside analysts or the general public. The Census 

Bureau gathers or collects information about some general features of 

private pension plans through surveys of households and individuals but 

has not yet had the opportunity to corroborate and supplement this data 

using information from respondents’ employers available through Labor. 

While information on pension and individual retirement accounts is 

gathered through forms collected by the IRS, the data are not regularly 

tabulated or linked to survey data, and thus, are not available for the 

study of pensions.



While improvements in data are essential for more reliable forecasts of 

retirement income, protecting respondents’ information and minimizing 

the burden data collection efforts impose on firms and individuals are 

also crucial. To sustain programs for compiling statistics about firms 

and individuals, respondents must be able to trust that their personal 

information will not be misused. Finding an appropriate balance between 

providing wider access to data to support policy analysis and keeping 

data secure is a persistent and evolving challenge that policymakers 

must continually address. In addition, federal agencies need to 

consider both the federal cost of these efforts and the financial and 

nonfinancial costs imposed on respondents in comparison with the 

benefits expected from improvements in data. While taking into account 

these cost considerations, respondent concerns about increased 

reporting burden, and agency concerns about maintaining 

confidentiality, the Congress, and the Departments of Labor and the 

Treasury could take the next steps to help fill some of the data needs.



Matter for Congressional Consideration:



To facilitate plan participants’, beneficiaries’, and analysts’ timely 

access to information about employer-provided pension plans, the 

Congress should consider directing the Secretary of Labor to obtain 

from plan administrators electronic filings of all SPDs and summaries 

of material modifications required by ERISA and make them publicly 

available in electronic form.



Recommendations:



To help provide the data needed to inform important policy decisions 

concerning retirement programs, the Secretary of Labor should direct 

the Bureau of Labor Statistics to prepare a plan to improve data for 

analyzing retirement income and wealth in coordination with OMB, the 

Federal Reserve Board, IRS, and the agencies represented in the Federal 

Interagency Forum on Aging Related Statistics, including the Census 

Bureau, SSA, and the National Institute on Aging. The plan should 

include cost-effective strategies to:



* make better use of existing statistics by linking survey and 

administrative data,



* improve access to linked data consistent with privacy and 

confidentiality legislation, and:



* improve data collected from employers related to retirement income 

and wealth.



For plans in place before these new filing requirements go into effect, 

and where it is cost-effective, the Secretary of Labor should use 

existing authority to obtain copies of summary plan descriptions and 

summaries of material modifications in cases where analysts working on 

federally conducted or federally sponsored research seek SPDs for 

statistical purposes. This should assist analysts of retirement income 

in obtaining information about the features of employer-sponsored 

benefit plans that are not electronically available.



To help analysts improve analyses of retirement plan finances, the 

Internal Revenue Service should publish on an annual basis aggregate 

tabulations, such as those prepared in the Statistics of Income 

Bulletin, of information filed on IRS Forms 5498, 1099-R, and W-2.



Agency Comments:



We provided a draft of this report to the Departments of Commerce, 

Labor, the Treasury, and the IRS and received technical comments from 

all four. In response we modified the draft as appropriate. We also 

provided a draft of this report to the 11 members of our expert panel 

and modified the draft as appropriate in response to their comments. 

Commerce had no major comments on the report (see app. VI). Labor 

agreed on the need for access to accurate data but did not agree with 

our recommendations to the Secretary of Labor (see app. VII).



Regarding our recommendation to collect electronic copies of SPDs, 

Labor concluded that this is at odds with the Taxpayer Relief Act of 

1997, which eliminated requirements that SPDs be regularly filed with 

Labor. Although Labor still has authority to request SPDs, it had 

indicated in final regulations concerning SPDs that it generally 

intended to limit the exercise of its authority to requesting SPDs on 

behalf of participants and beneficiaries. Labor also indicated that 

there was little public interest in the SPDs. Although there was not 

substantial public demand for paper copies of SPD’s in Labor’s Public 

Disclosure Room in Washington, D.C., in the last decade there has been 

a great increase in policymakers’ demand for better data on retirement 

income in light of the rapid future increase in the retiree population. 

Although in both 1993 and 1995 we supported elimination of paper filing 

requirements, we also endorsed electronic access to SPDs. We continue 

to believe that it is time to phase in a requirement that SPDs be filed 

electronically. The costs involved should be considerably less than 

those incurred filing and storing paper copies of the documents. The 

burden imposed on plan administrators would not be unreasonable. Labor 

estimated in 1998, for example, that it would cost an average of $1.55 

to provide SPDs for health benefit plans to each plan participant, of 

which $1.00 was the estimated cost of materials and postage.[Footnote 

36] Cognizant of the shortcomings of many SPDs, experts we consulted 

nonetheless indicated that better access to SPDs is a top priority for 

improving retirement income data. Accordingly, we changed our 

recommendation to a Matter for Consideration for the Congress to direct 

the Secretary of Labor to obtain from plan administrators electronic 

filings of all SPDs and summaries of material modifications required by 

ERISA and make them publicly available in electronic form.



Regarding our recommendation that BLS prepare a plan to improve data 

for analyzing retirement income and wealth, Labor indicated that past 

efforts to coordinate improvements in retirement income data have not 

been successful due to privacy concerns, and other issues. They stated 

that the type of planning and coordination we envisioned usually is the 

purview of OMB’s Office of Statistical Policy, and that BLS could 

participate in that coordination. Furthermore, the extra demands placed 

on staff would not be negligible. In our view, the need for 

improvements in retirement income data warrants renewed efforts to 

address the priorities identified by the experts we consulted. The 

recommendations of these experts focused primarily on improved use of 

existing data to support policy analysis, and not on additional data 

collection. We recognize OMB’s role overseeing information collection 

and developing policies to improve government statistics. However, this 

does not preclude efforts by other agencies to take the lead in 

developing plans for improvements focused on data within specific 

subject areas such as retirement income. Because OMB does not have the 

retirement income focus needed to coordinate in this way, we have 

retained our original recommendation. That recommendation specifically 

identifies OMB as one of the agencies that should be involved in the 

development of a plan, and the plan should be developed in a manner 

consistent with OMB’s policy.



With respect to our recommendation regarding provision of SPDs before 

new electronic filing requirements go into effect, Labor stated that 

the need to protect the confidentiality of survey data may hamper wider 

access to SPDs. BLS, for example, assures respondents to its National 

Compensation Survey that their identities will be kept confidential. 

The Secretary’s authority to request SPDs is delegated to EBSA. If BLS 

were to obtain SPDs from EBSA it would have to reveal the identity of 

its respondents and therefore would have to obtain their consent. We 

conclude that the need for improvements in retirement income data 

warrants Labor’s use of its existing authority to obtain SPDs for 

analysts engaged in federally conducted or federally sponsored 

research. Arrangements could be developed through which BLS and other 

statistical agencies could both obtain SPDs and protect the identity of 

respondents. They could, for example, request SPDs from a larger number 

of employers without identifying which employers were being surveyed. 

This is the kind of improved access to data that we envisioned BLS 

could take the lead in identifying in coordination with other agencies.



We are sending copies of this report to the Secretary of Labor, the 

Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Commerce, and the 

Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. We will also make copies 

available to others on request. In addition, the report will be 

available at no charge on GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov/.



If you have any questions concerning this report, please contact 

Barbara Bovbjerg at (202) 512-7215, Robert Parker at (202) 512-9750. 

See appendix VIII for other contacts and staff acknowledgments.



Sincerely yours,



Barbara D. Bovbjerg

Director, Education, Workforce

 and Income Security Issues:



Robert P. Parker

Chief Statistician:



Signed by Barbara D. Bovbjerg and Robert P. Parker:



[End of section]



Appendix I: Scope and Methodology:



To identify information that experts say is a priority for improving 

data for the study of retirement income and wealth, we conducted a Web 

based survey of experts in the field and convened an 11 member panel of 

experts to discuss opportunities for improving these data. We used the 

Web based survey instrument to survey 276 experts in retirement income 

data.[Footnote 37] Before implementing the survey, we contacted 

respondents via email and asked them to participate. Out of our initial 

list of 326 experts, 27 declined to participate, with the majority 

citing busy schedules or lack of sufficient expertise as their reasons. 

In addition, we concluded that we had inaccurate or out-of-date E-mail 

addresses for 23 of the experts.



We studied available research and interviewed experts in order to 

develop a questionnaire of options to improve retirement income. The 

questionnaire asked respondents to indicate the priority (from highest 

to lowest) they would place on 22 actions to improve retirement income 

data. Respondents were asked to rate each action independently, without 

making comparisons between the actions. We pretested the content and 

format of the questionnaire with 6 experts in the area of retirement 

income. The questionnaire was then refined and posted on our Web site 

and an E-mail message informed participants of its availability. This 

E-mail message also contained a unique user name and password that 

allowed each respondent to log on and fill out his or her own 

questionnaire.



As of December 12, 2002, 190 of the experts responded to the survey (a 

69% response rate). Eighteen percent of respondents indicated that they 

were affiliated with federal agencies, about half were affiliated with 

colleges and universities, 24 percent were affiliated with other 

nonprofit organizations, and the remaining 9 percent were affiliated 

with for profit or other organizations.



Our preliminary results of the survey identified two areas for 

improvement that respondents most often cited as having the highest 

priority: (1) matching survey and administrative data and (2) employer 

data. We used these areas to serve as the principal topics at a 1-day 

expert panel meeting at our headquarters on September 10, 2002. The 11 

panelists included 5 federal officials with responsibilities related to 

retirement income data, 3 university based analysts, and 3 from private 

not-for-profit agencies. Barbara Bovbjerg, Director, Education, 

Workforce, and Income Security Issues, and Robert Parker, Chief 

Statistician, moderated the discussion. (For a summary of the panel’s 

discussion and a list of panelists, see app. IV.):



To identify factors limiting the availability of information needed for 

the study of retirement income and wealth, we reviewed documents 

obtained from and interviewed officials at the Department of Labor’s 

(Labor) Employee Benefit Security Administration (EBSA), and Bureau of 

Labor Statistics (BLS), the Census Bureau, the Treasury Department’s 

Office of Tax Analysis, the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Statistics 

of Income Division, the National Institute of Health’s National 

Institute on Aging, and the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) 

Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics. We also attended 

conferences related to retirement income analysis sponsored by the 

Retirement Research Consortium and the Society of Actuaries and 

interviewed analysts at the Urban Institute, The Brookings Institution, 

the Employee Benefit Research Institute, and the National Research 

Council.



The scope of our work did not include an evaluation of estimated costs 

and benefits of specific proposals for improving retirement income 

data. We did not independently verify the federal funding figures 

provided to us by longitudinal survey administrators or agencies 

sponsoring the surveys.



[End of section]



Appendix II: Status of Recommendations From the 1997 Report of the 
Panel 

on Retirement Income Modeling:



Below are recommendations concerning retirement income data needs 

excerpted from the 1997 report of the National Research Council’s Panel 

on Retirement Income Modeling followed by summaries on the status of 

each as of December 2002.[Footnote 38]



1. Continue support of longitudinal studies:



Recommendation: Existing panel surveys of middle-aged and older people 

should receive continued government support. Longitudinal data from 

these surveys are essential to analyze retirement and savings decisions 

and determine behavioral responses to changes in public and private 

sector policies. Such analyses in turn are essential to develop better 

models for forecasting the likely effects of alternative policy 

proposals on retirement income security. In particular, the Health and 

Retirement Study (HRS) and Asset and Home Dynamics Among the Oldest Old 

(AHEAD) surveys should receive continued support. These surveys should 

be refreshed periodically with new cohorts in order to offer insight 

into how behavior changes over time.



Status: As shown in table 2, the amounts of federal support for three 

major longitudinal surveys have been sustained. The HRS and AHEAD 

studies, which are now jointly funded, have increased after taking the 

effects of inflation in account.



Table 2: Federal Outlays for Selected Longitudinal Studies--Fiscal 

Years 1997-2001:



Millions of constant fiscal year 2001 dollars[A].



HRS and AHEAD; 1997: $6.8; 1998: $7.0; 1999: $7.4;  

2000: $9.0; 2001: $9.4; 2002: $10.1.



National Longitudinal Studies[B];  

1997: 14.0;  

1998: 11.8;  

1999: 13.2;  

2000: 12.8;  

2001: 12.8;  

2002: 12.4.



Panel Study of Income Dynamics[C];   

1997: 2.5;  

1998: 2.5;  

1999: 3.7;  

2000: 3.7;  

2001: 3.6;  

2002: 2.8.



Total;  

1997: $23.3;

1998: $21.3;  

1999: $24.3;

2000: $25.5;   

2001: $25.8;

2002: $25.3.



Source: GAO analysis of data from the National Institute of Aging and 

the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.



[A] These figures are adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of 

Economic Analysis’s gross domestic product price index.



[B] NLS:



[C] PSID:



[End of table]



The National Institute on Aging continues to fund the HRS and AHEAD 

studies. Supplemental funding also comes from SSA. Both the AHEAD and 

HRS studies have been refreshed with new cohorts. In 1998, interviews 

began for a cohort of people born from 1924 to 1930 and a cohort of 

people born from 1942 to 1947.



The National Science Foundation continues to fund the PSID. Additional 

support comes from the National Institute on Aging, the National 

Institute on Child Health and Human Development, and the Departments of 

Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development 

(HUD), and Labor.



Labor sponsors the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) through BLS. The 

NLS is conducted under contract with researchers at Ohio State 

University, the University of Chicago, the Census Bureau and the 

University of Wisconsin. In addition to Labor funding, financial 

support has come from agencies including the National Institute of 

Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Aging, 

the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol 

Abuse and Alcoholism, and the Departments of Defense, Justice, and 

Education.



2. Measure expenditures:



Recommendation: Panel surveys of middle-aged and older people should 

experiment with methods to develop measures of families’ total 

expenditures and expenditures on housing and medical care. Such 

consumption measures are important for projections of economic well 

being in retirement.



Status: The HRS and AHEAD surveys provide on a longitudinal basis 

respondents’ estimates of many categories of expenditures including 

housing expenditures, total out-of-pocket medical expenditures, and 

total expenditures, total expenditures relative to income, as well as 

information on savings preferences. Labor’s Consumer Expenditure Survey 

provides cross-sectional rather than longitudinal data on many types of 

expenditures, including housing expenditures, and medical 

expenditures, and total expenditures and related income. The American 

Housing Survey, sponsored by HUD, provides detail on housing 

expenditures . The proposed American Community Survey also would 

provide limited detail on housing expenditures. The Medical Expenditure 

Panel Survey (MEPS) provides extensive data on medical expenditures.



3. Gather more data on younger people:



Recommendation: Panel surveys of younger people, such as the National 

Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), should include detailed 

questionnaire modules on pension coverage, wealth, health status, and 

retirement-and savings-related expectations. Such information is 

needed to fully understand life-cycle behavior and to track the 

disparities in income and wealth that are evident by middle age.



Status: The NLSY asks about the total amount of retirement savings, 

amounts contributed, and amounts withdrawn, and pension coverage. It 

also provides information about assets and debt and limited information 

about health (height, weight, and general evaluation of health), but 

not retirement or savings expectations.



In 1995-99 interviews, the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women 

(NLSYW) asked respondents the extent to which they agreed or disagree 

with statements such as “Work is the most meaningful part of life” and 

“People who don’t retire when they can afford to are foolish.” The 

NLSYW also asked respondents about the availability of a retirement or 

pension plans in 1978 and in each round from 1978, 1983, through 1999. 

The 1991 and 1995-99 rounds of the survey included more detailed 

questions on amounts in retirement plans, formula for calculating 

benefits for defined benefit plans provided by current and previous 

employers, vesting status, and expectations about retirement, such as 

expected amounts of benefits.



4. Collaborate to improve data quality and utility:



Recommendation: Agencies and researchers involved in retirement income-

related panel surveys of individuals, and other surveys as appropriate 

(such as the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the Survey of Income 

and Program Participation (SIPP)), should collaborate regularly in 

reviewing questionnaire content and data collection practices to 

identify ways to improve data quality and utility. For example, the 

bracketing technique used in HRS and AHEAD that has been demonstrated 

to reduce nonresponse to important items should be adopted in other 

surveys. Also, such surveys might include a common core of questions on 

specific topics. The National Institute on Aging should facilitate such 

collaborative efforts.



Status: Federal agencies collaborate through entities such as (1) the 

Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics, originally 

established by the National Institute on Aging, National Center for 

Health Statistics, and Census Bureau and (2) the Inter-Departmental 

Committee on Employment-Related Health Insurance Surveys, headed by the 

BLS, National Center for Health Statistics, and the Agency for 

Healthcare Research and Quality. The Federal Committee on Statistical 

Methodology and the Interagency Committee on Confidentiality and Data 

Access have coordinated research on techniques such as the bracketing 

technique are now widely used and researchers do collaborate on 

questionnaire design. In addition, the Census Bureau and other 

statistical agencies seek comments from a wide range of researchers on 

the content of questions before fielding survey instruments. For 

example, the Interagency Committee on the SIPP, which consists of 

representatives of interested federal agencies, and the American 

Statistical Association’s Survey Research Methods Section SIPP Working 

Group, which consists of federal and non-federal analysts, both advise 

the Census Bureau on that survey.



5. Establish interagency task force on employer data:



Recommendation: Labor should establish an interagency task force on 

employer data to specify an integrated plan for collecting retirement 

income-related information. The plan should specify short-term and 

long-term goals that consider user needs, resource constraints, and the 

problems of obtaining information from employers due to such factors as 

low response rates, locating the appropriate respondents, and 

confidentiality concerns. The task force should involve researchers, 

private benefit consultants, and representatives of public and private 

employers in its work.



Status: According to officials at the Department’s EBSA, Labor has not 

made this a priority because its resources are limited.



6. Gather more data on benefit plan offerings:



Recommendation: The employer data collection plan should include short-

term and long-term goals for obtaining improved information on the 

distribution across employers of all benefit plan offerings (including 

pensions, health insurance, disability insurance, retiree health 

insurance, life insurance). Comprehensive baseline information is a 

priority need, along with a plan for regular updating. Needed data 

elements include benefit plan characteristics and costs, employer 

characteristics (e.g., number of employees, financial characteristics, 

wage structure), and workforce characteristics (e.g., age structure) 

for public and private employers and the self-employed.



Status: Labor’s BLS has increased the amount of information gathered 

through its National Compensation Survey, which includes components 

that had been gathered through the Employee Benefits Survey, the 

Employment Cost Index survey, and the Occupational Compensation Survey. 

The Employee Benefits Survey did not provide tabulations of the 

estimated percentage of establishments providing specified types of 

benefits, but the National Compensation Survey does. The survey 

includes components for state and local government employers, medium 

and large private employers, and small private employers, but not 

federal employers or the self-employed. The survey provides data on 

number of employees, employer and employee costs, wage structure, and 

the characteristics of retirement benefit plans. It does provide data 

on the employer’s cost of providing defined benefit and defined 

contribution retirement programs. It does not provide information on 

financial characteristics of plans (such as assets and liabilities) and 

does not provide information on the age structure of the workforce.



In addition, the MEPS, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research 

and Quality, provides additional data on health insurance plans.



7. Redesign and enhance employee benefits survey.



Recommendation: The employer data collection task force should give 

priority to redesigning and enhancing existing data collection systems 

on employer benefit offerings and related topics. Such systems include 

the Employee Benefits Survey, which currently provides information for 

broad categories of employe[rs] but not for employe[es], and the Form 

5500 data series, which serves regulatory purposes and currently has 

limited research use. Consideration should be given to improving the 

Form 5500 series, including:



* making the data more timely and accessible (e.g., on-line);



* linking records over time to provide panel data;



* merging the Form 5500 benefit plan information with the kind of 

employer financial characteristics found in the Compustat database;



* working to standardize the reporting for health care and disability 

plans, so that they can be added to the Form 5500 database; and:



* finding ways to add information about benefit plan features to the 

database, perhaps by abstracting analytically useful information from 

the narrative plan descriptions that are filed with the Form 5500.



Status: The Employee Benefits Survey (now part of the National 

Compensation Survey) continues to provide data for categories of 

employers, not categories of employees. It provides data by employer 

industry group, employer employment size group, employee union status, 

employee occupational group, and employer geographic location. BLS has 

begun providing aggregate estimates for all private employers, rather 

than only providing data separately for small private employers, and 

large private employers, as it did in the past. However, the survey 

does not cover federal, military, agricultural, fishing, forestry, or 

private household employers.



Data from IRS Form 5500 continues to become available well after the 

end of the reporting year. (Data for 1998 or the 1998-99 reporting year 

became available in 2002.) In part, this is because the IRS deadline 

for submitting the forms is 7 months after the end of the reporting 

year. For example, for a firm with a 1998 reporting year beginning 

December 15, 1998, and ending December 14, 1999, the Form 5500 was due 

July 31, 2000. In addition, Labor takes several months to review and 

edit the returns before making them publicly available. Labor makes 

Form 5500 data files available to researchers and policy analysts, but 

its Web site does not include links to the data. A private firm 

provides a Web site with images of the completed forms, but not 

compiled data sets. Labor does not link Form 5500 reports by firm to 

facilitate longitudinal analysis. Linking these consolidated reports of 

publicly held companies with Form 5500 data is difficult because these 

reports can cover only parts of a company, more than one company, or 

privately held companies. Some researchers have linked these data for 

selected firms.



Labor no longer requires that it receives the summary plan descriptions 

regularly, and as a result the public no longer has access rights to 

new or revised versions. Labor does, however, incorporate some data 

from these plans in its National Compensation Survey data. This 

includes, for example, information on normal retirement ages and 

formulas for calculating employer contributions to pension plans.



8. Gather more data on labor demand for older workers:



Recommendation: The employer data collection plan should include short-

term and long-term goals for obtaining information on labor demand for 

older workers and the factors that may affect that demand. Needed data 

elements include employment patterns of older workers, compensation and 

benefit costs by age, and worker productivity by age. Very little 

information on these topics is currently available, and some raise 

difficult measurement issues. A reasonable short-term goal is to 

sponsor case studies of employers that can help identify important 

variables and feasible means of collecting them on a larger scale.



Status: The Health and Retirement Study and other surveys provide much 

data on employment patterns and salary and wages of older workers. 

Little has been done, however, concerning compensation and benefits 

costs or productivity by age.



9. Conduct longitudinal survey of employers and their workers:



Recommendation: The employer data collection task force should consider 

the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of a panel survey, which is 

periodically refreshed that collects detailed information on employers 

and their workers. Such a survey should cover the full universe, 

including private for profit, nonprofit, and government employers, and 

the self-employed. Longitudinal data from an employer-based survey are 

needed to analyze the factors that affect employer decisions about 

recruitment and retention of older workers and benefit plan offerings 

and how these decisions, in turn, affect workers.



Status: Such a task force has not been formed and no survey like the 

one the panel recommended has been undertaken. BLS has developed a 

longitudinal database of business establishments, the “LDB”, based on 

data from states’ unemployment insurance programs, and the Census 

Bureau continues to maintain a longitudinal establishment database 

covering all private nonagricultural establishments. Neither of these 

databases includes data on pensions or other retirement plans. The BLS 

database provides data on employees’ hours and wages. The Census Bureau 

database also provides data on employment and wages, and periodically 

includes data on employer contributions to pension plans and health 

insurance. To some extent the HRS links data from individuals and their 

employers on a longitudinal basis, but it tracks the individuals, not 

the firms over time. The E-Government Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-347) may 

facilitate collaboration between the Census Bureau and BLS and could 

provide for linking National Compensation Survey (NCS) data on 

retirement plans to the Census Bureau’s data on business 

establishments.



10. Gather more data from employers of HRS/AHEAD sample members:



Recommendation: HRS and AHEAD should develop and implement a plan for 

obtaining information on a continuing basis on the pension and health 

insurance offerings of the employers of the HRS/AHEAD sample members.



Status: Data from HRS sample members’ employers is available. Similar 

efforts have been undertaken with other surveys, such as the National 

Longitudinal Study of Mature Women.



11. Match panel survey responses and key administrative records:



Recommendation: Matched files of panel survey responses and key 

administrative records should be regularly produced for retirement-

income-related policy analysis and projection purposes. Examples 

include exact matches of survey records and Social Security earnings 

histories and benefit records, Medicare and Medicaid records, and the 

National Death Index. The added information in matched files is 

obtainable at low marginal cost and is essential for analysis of 

retirement and savings decisions and the effect of medical care use and 

expenditures on retirement security.



Status: Some matches between administrative data and panel survey data 

have been achieved. HRS investigators have completed matches between 

HRS and Social Security earnings and benefit record data, National 

Death Index data, and Medicare records. These are available on a 

restricted basis to selected researchers and policy analysts.



The Census Bureau has matched SIPP data with Social Security earnings 

records and extracts from individuals’ IRS tax return data. The Census 

Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) project is 

exploring options for more extensive matches between Form 5500 data 

from employers and Census Bureau survey data on 

establishments.[Footnote 39] Recently finalized Treasury regulations 

give the Census Bureau access to specified IRS tax return records to 

support SIPP and LEHD data linkage efforts.[Footnote 40]



Also, researchers at the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) 

linked survey data to state Medicaid records in order to develop state 

specific projections of Medicaid expenditures.



12. Increase researchers’ access to exact match files safeguarding

 confidentiality:



Recommendation: Agencies should collaborate on the development and 

oversight of matched data sets for individuals and employers, with 

input from researchers on content. They should also vigorously explore 

creative solutions for providing research access to exact match files 

that safeguard the confidentiality of individual responses. Possible 

solutions include: (1) developing public use files that contain summary 

variables derived from the administrative records portion of the 

matched file (2) requiring researchers to sign nondisclosure agreements 

with significant penalties for violations; and (3) providing 

researchers with access to matched files on site at secure data 

centers.



Status: Access to linked data sets remains quite limited. Access to HRS 

linked data for example, is typically made available via a rigorous 

application process resulting in a data use agreement with the 

University of Michigan. To date, none of the linked data sets are 

available in encrypted public use files. However, according to HRS 

researchers, “The HRS, in conjunction with several other funded 

projects, has established a secure data facility to broaden access to 

the restricted datasets. We are exploring ways to eventually implement 

a system for encrypted online delivery of sensitive data files, as well 

as extend access to our restricted data.” (One such method is the 

further use of data centers, which provide access to restricted 

information, including linked data sets, for approved researchers 

working on data sets. For more information on data centers, see page 

19).



13. Fund regular evaluation of data quality:



Recommendation: Budgets for retirement income-related surveys should 

include sufficient resources for regular evaluation of data quality. 

Evaluation methods include reinterviewing sub-samples of respondents to 

measure consistency of reporting; experimentation with alternative 

question wording to identify possible reporting problems; and comparing 

survey estimates with administrative records to determine the 

completeness and accuracy of survey reporting, taking care to adjust 

for differences in definitions and other aspects of the two sources.



Status: Several studies using the recommended methods have been 

conducted, with mixed results. The Census Bureau conducted a study 

comparing estimates of various types of 1990-96 incomes in SIPP and CPS 

to benchmark data estimated by the Census Bureau from the personal 

income estimates in the National Income and Product Accounts. The study 

found disparities between the survey based Census estimates and the 

administrative record based personal income estimates that could not be 

explained by differences in definitions.[Footnote 41] For 1996, the 

aggregate wages and salary estimate based on CPS survey data was 102 

percent of the benchmark based on administrative records and the CPS 

social security and railroad retirement benefit payments data were 92 

percent of the benchmark. In contrast, the study found more substantial 

disparities for several other types of income. The aggregate CPS data 

for property income was 71 percent of the benchmark, and CPS data for 

pension income was 77 percent of the benchmark. The study is being 

replicated with data for 1999. Other studies have noted definitional 

and quality differences between estimates of personal savings from the 

Flow of Funds Accounts and National Income and Product 

Accounts.[Footnote 42] Another study compared estimates of wealth from 

the SCF, PSID, and SIPP.[Footnote 43]



The Department of Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis has compared 

estimates of pension plan participation and contributions with 

estimates from the Census Bureau survey data. The Office of Tax 

Analysis linked W-2 data with Statement of Income (SOI) data from Form 

1040. The results from this data set matched results from Census Bureau 

surveys, except for low-income households. The tax records obviously 

don’t include nonfilers, but in addition, by design, the SOI sample 

includes relatively few low-income filers (in the order of 1 in 5,000 

filers), but all filers in the highest income brackets. The Census 

Bureau surveys such as the SIPP over sample low income households and 

have much less data for the highest income households. For most income 

brackets, however, the data match quite well, according to Treasury 

officials.



The Census Bureau periodically assesses the quality of CPS data by 

reinterviewing a subsample of respondents, but none of the 

reinterviewing has covered questions on income for at least the last 4 

years, according to the Census Bureau quality assurance staff.



The Census Bureau has also studied the accuracy of respondent data by 

matching income data in the March CPS with selected income detail on 

individual IRS income tax returns and SSA earnings and benefit records. 

A similar effort is underway using 1999 data.



One of the components of the BLS’s National Compensation Survey is a 

program of re-interviews of a sub-sample of respondents to verify and 

clarify survey data, including data on retirement plans.



HRS investigators have compared employee responses about retirement 

income to employer provided data and Social Security records and found 

wide discrepancies. It is unclear to what extent these result from 

respondents’ limited knowledge of their pensions or data errors.



[End of section]



Appendix III: GAO Survey on Retirement Income Data Needs and List of 

Respondents:



Figure 1: Questionnaire:



[See PDF for image]



[End of figure]



Survey Results:



Table 3: 1. Data on households and individuals: Please indicate the 

priority you would place on taking the following actions to improve 

retirement income data.



Increase support for longitudinal studies of individuals over 50 years 

of age, such as the HRS; 

Highest priority (percent): 27.6; 

High priority (percent): 40.0; 

Medium priority (percent): 23.8; 

Low priority (percent): 5.9; 

Lowest priority (percent): 2.2; 

No opinion (percent): 0.5; 

Number of cases: 185.



Expand longitudinal studies of retirement savings of younger 

individuals (age 50 or below); 

Highest priority (percent): 26.9; 

High priority (percent): 39.2; 

Medium priority (percent): 24.2; 

Low priority (percent): 7.5; 

Lowest priority (percent): 1.6; 

No opinion (percent): 0.5; 

Number of cases: 186.



Increase support for other studies of households and individuals’ 

retirement and wealth, such as the SIPP, and the SCF; 

Highest priority (percent): 18.2; 

High priority (percent): 28.3; 

Medium priority (percent): 40.6; 

Low priority (percent): 10.7; 

Lowest priority (percent): 1.1; 

No opinion (percent): 1.1; 

Number of cases: 187.



Improve measurement of family and household consumption expenditures in 

surveys such as the CEX and in panel surveys such as HRS; 

Highest priority (percent): 15.2; 

High priority (percent): 33.2; 

Medium priority (percent): 32.1; 

Low priority (percent): 12.0; 

Lowest priority (percent): 6.0; 

No opinion (percent): 1.6; 

Number of cases: 184.



[End of table]



Table 4: 2. Data on employers and employee benefits: Please indicate 

the priority you would place on taking the following actions to improve 

retirement income data.



Improve the design and reporting of retirement income-related data from 

employers, such as mandatory pension plan disclosures and surveys on 

benefit plan offerings; 

Highest priority (percent): 33.0; 

High priority (percent): 31.4; 

Medium priority (percent): 25.0; 

Low priority (percent): 8.0; 

Lowest priority (percent): 1.6; 

No opinion (percent): 1.1; 

Number of cases: 188.



Conduct research on labor demand for older workers and the factors that 

may affect that demand; 

Highest priority (percent): 13.8; 

High priority (percent): 28.2; 

Medium priority (percent): 31.9; 

Low priority (percent): 19.1; 

Lowest priority (percent): 6.4; 

No opinion (percent): 0.5; 

Number of cases: 188. 



Conduct a longitudinal survey of employers and their workers; 

Highest priority (percent): 14.0; 

High priority (percent): 25.3; 

Medium priority (percent): 33.9; 

Low priority (percent): 21.5; 

Lowest priority (percent): 3.2; 

No opinion (percent): 2.2; 

Number of cases: 186.



Improve data from the employers of respondents in surveys such as the 

HRS, and the AHEAD; 

Highest priority (percent): 30.1; 

High priority (percent): 35.5; 

Medium priority (percent): 21.9; 

Low priority (percent): 7.1; 

Lowest priority (percent): 2.2; 

No opinion (percent): 3.3; 

Number of cases: 183.



[End of table]



Table 5: 3. Other areas for improvement: Please indicate the priority 

you would place on taking the following actions to improve retirement 

income data.



Improve national data on aggregate retirement and non retirement assets 

such as Flow of Funds, and National Income and Product Accounts; 

Highest priority (percent): 9.2; 

High priority (percent): 20.0; 

Medium priority (percent): 30.3; 

Low priority (percent): 28.6; 

Lowest priority (percent): 8.1; 

No opinion (percent): 3.8; 

Number of cases: 185.



Improve matching of survey respondents with key administrative records, 

while protecting confidentiality; 

Highest priority (percent): 45.2; 

High priority (percent): 30.1; 

Medium priority (percent): 14.5; 

Low priority (percent): 5.4; 

Lowest priority (percent): 2.2; 

No opinion (percent): 2.7; 

Number of cases: 186.



Increase researchers’ access to datasets on individuals or households 

matched with administrative data sets; 

Highest priority (percent): 56.8; 

High priority (percent): 25.1; 

Medium priority (percent): 9.8; 

Low priority (percent): 4.4; 

Lowest priority (percent): 2.7; 

No opinion (percent): 1.1; 

Number of cases: 183.



Improve collaboration between agencies and researchers to improve 

questionnaires and data collection and dissemination practices; 

Highest priority (percent): 24.1; 

High priority (percent): 40.1; 

Medium priority (percent): 27.3;

Low priority (percent): 7.0; 

Lowest priority (percent): 0.5; 

No opinion (percent): 1.1; 

Number of cases: 187.



[End of table]



Table 6: 4. Crosscutting actions: Please indicate the priority you 

would place on taking the following actions to improve retirement 

income data.



Collect additional data in existing surveys; 

Highest priority

(percent): 23.0; 

High priority

(percent): 36.1; 

Medium priority

(percent): 31.1; 

Low priority

(percent): 6.6; 

Lowest priority

(percent): 0.5; 

No opinion

(percent): 2.7; 

Number

of cases: 183.



Begin new surveys; 

Highest priority

(percent): 4.0; 

High priority

(percent): 14.7; 

Medium priority

(percent): 29.9; 

Low priority

(percent): 35.0; 

Lowest priority

(percent): 13.6; 

No opinion

(percent): 2.8; 

Number

of cases: 177.



Improve the quality of existing surveys; 

Highest priority

(percent): 25.7; 

High priority

(percent): 44.3; 

Medium priority

(percent): 22.4; 

Low priority

(percent): 2.7; 

Lowest priority

(percent): 2.2; 

No opinion

(percent): 2.7; 

Number

of cases: 183.



Improve the timeliness of existing data; 

Highest priority

(percent): 21.6; 

High priority

(percent): 33.0; 

Medium priority

(percent): 24.9; 

Low priority

(percent): 14.1; 

Lowest priority

(percent): 4.3; 

No opinion

(percent): 2.2; 

Number

of cases: 185.



Improve researchers’ access to existing administrative data, such as 

Social Security earnings records or Medicare records; 

Highest priority

(percent): 50.8; 

High priority

(percent): 28.6; 

Medium priority

(percent): 13.5; 

Low priority

(percent): 3.8; 

Lowest priority

(percent): 2.2; 

No opinion

(percent): 1.1; 

Number

of cases: 185.



Improve techniques for protecting the privacy of respondents’ survey 

and administrative data; 

Highest priority

(percent): 20.5; 

High priority

(percent): 22.2; 

Medium priority

(percent): 34.1; 

Low priority

(percent): 16.2; 

Lowest priority

(percent): 3.2; 

No opinion

(percent): 3.8;

Number

of cases: 185.



Fund research on retirement income and wealth; 

Highest priority

(percent): 28.1; 

High priority

(percent): 38.9; 

Medium priority

(percent): 22.7; 

Low priority

(percent): 7.6;

 Lowest priority

(percent): 1.6; 

No opinion

(percent): 1.1; 

Number

of cases: 185.



Fund expanded data collection efforts; 

Highest priority

(percent): 18.4; 

High priority

(percent): 45.3; 

Medium priority

(percent): 27.4; 

Low priority

(percent): 5.0; 

Lowest priority

(percent): 1.7; 

No opinion

(percent): 2.2; 

Number

of cases: 179.



Fund increased or improved matching of data; Highest priority

(percent): 31.1; 

High priority

(percent): 37.3; 

Medium priority

(percent): 22.0; 

Low priority

(percent): 5.6; 

Lowest priority

(percent): 1.7; 

No opinion

(percent): 2.3; 

Number

of cases: 177.



Fund new or improved modeling efforts; Highest priority

(percent): 11.7; 

High priority

(percent): 18.4; 

Medium priority

(percent): 40.8; 

Low priority

(percent): 20.7; 

Lowest priority

(percent): 6.1; 

No opinion

(percent): 2.2; 

Number

of cases: 179.



[End of table]



Table 7: 5. Are there other types of actions that are important for 

improving the availability, timeliness, or quality of retirement income 

and wealth data?



Percent writing comments: 43.2; Number of cases: 190.



[End of table]



Figure 2: 6. Which of the following describe the way that you work with 

retirement income and wealth data? (Check all that apply.):



(Continued From Previous Page)



Data collection and/or data management; Percent

checking: 26.7; Number of cases: 187.



Primary data analysis; Percent

checking: 53.5; Number of cases: 187.



Secondary data analysis; Percent

checking: 58.8; Number of cases: 187.



Policy analysis or development; Percent

checking: 74.3; Number of cases: 187.



Other; Percent

checking: 9.1; Number of cases: 187.



6a. If you checked ‘other’ (above), please specify the way you work 

with retirement income data in the text box below.; Percent

checking: 100; Number

of cases: 17.



[See PDF for image]



[End of figure]



[End of table]



Table 8: 7. Which of the following describes your affiliation?



Federal government; Percent

checking: 18.0; Number

of cases: 189.



State or local government; Percent

checking: 0.0; Number

of cases: 189.



University or college; Percent

checking: 48.7; Number

of cases: 189.



Other not-for-profit organization; Percent

checking: 24.3; Number

of cases: 189.



Private for profit organization; Percent

checking: 7.4; Number

of cases: 189.



Other; Percent

checking: 1.6; Number

of cases: 189.



7a. If you checked “other” (above), please 

specify your affiliation in the text

 box below.; Percent

checking: 66.7; Number

of cases: 3.



[End of table]



Table 9: 8. Which of the following data sets have you used in your work 

during the past 5 years? (Check all that apply.):



AHEAD; Percent

checking: 20.1; Number

of cases: 184.



CEX; Percent

checking: 35.9; Number

of cases: 184.



CPS; Percent

checking: 76.6; Number

of cases: 184.



Flow of funds data; Percent

checking: 30.4; Number

of cases: 184.



HRS; Percent

checking: 63.6; Number

of cases: 184.



IRS Form 5500 data; Percent

checking: 38.0; Number

of cases: 184.



NCS (incorporating the Employee Benefits Survey; Percent

checking: 17.9; Number

of cases: 184.



National Income and Product Accounts data; Percent

checking: 35.9; Number

of cases: 184.



PSID; Percent

checking: 35.9; Number

of cases: 184.



SSA administrative files; Percent

checking: 36.4; Number

of cases: 184.



SCF; Percent

checking: 47.3; Number

of cases: 184.



SIPP; Percent

checking: 51.1; Number

of cases: 184.



Other; Percent

checking: 21.7; Number

of cases: 184.



8a. If you checked “other” (above), please

specify the data sets in the text box below.; Percent

checking: 100; Number

of cases: 40.



[End of table]



Table 10: Additional comments: If you would like to make additional 

comments concerning any topic covered in this questionnaire, please 

enter them in the textbox below.



Percent writing comments: 14.7; Number of cases: 190.



[End of table]



List of Respondents

to the Survey:



Henry J. Aaron

The Brookings Institution:



Julie Agnew

College of William and Mary:



John Ameriks

TIAA-CREF Institute:



Joseph M. Anderson

Capital Research Associates:



Kenneth Apfel

University of Texas at Austin:



Katherine Baicker

Dartmouth College:



Vickie Bajtelsmit

Colorado State University:



Dean Baker

Center for Economic and Policy Research:



Laurel Beedon

Public Policy Institute, AARP:



Dan Beller

Employee Benefits Security Administration:



Department of Labor:



Keith A. Bender

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee:



Mark C. Berger

University of Kentucky:



B. Douglas Bernheim

Stanford University:



Merton C. Bernstein

Washington University:



Joydeep Bhattacharya

Iowa State University:



Andrew Biggs

Cato Institute:



Emily Blank

Howard University:



Robert B. Blancato

Matz, Blancato & Associates, Inc.



Henning Bohn

University of California - Santa Barbara:



Christopher M. Bone

Actuarial Science Associates:



Barry P. Bosworth

The Brookings Institution:



Linda Smith Brothers

University of Wisconsin - Madison:



Charlie Brown

University of Michigan:



Jeffrey Brown

Harvard University:



Richard V. Burkhauser

Cornell University:



Gary Burtless

The Brookings Institution:



John Y. Campbell

Harvard University:



William J. Carrington

Welch Consulting:



Yung-Ping Chen

University of Massachusetts Boston:



Constance F. Citro

National Research Council:



Robert L. Clark

North Carolina State University:



Denise M. Clark

Feder Semo Clark & Bard, P.C.



Joao Cocco

London Business School:



Lee Cohen

Social Security Administration:



Steven B. Cohen

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality|

Department of Health and Human Services:



Courtney C. Coile

Wellesley College:



Craig Copeland

 EBRI:



Christopher Cornwell

University of Georgia:



Julia Lynn Coronado

Federal Reserve Board:



David Cutler

Harvard University:



Kimberly Darling

SAG Corporation:



Angus Deaton

Princeton University:



Jeff Dominitz

Carnegie Mellon University:



Stuart Dorsey

Baker University:



Karen Dynan

Federal Reserve Board:



Ryan D. Edwards

Stanford University:



Douglas W. Elmendorf

Federal Reserve Board:



Gary V. Engelhardt

Syracuse University:



Eric M. Engen

American Enterprise Institute:



William E. Even

Miami University:



Jeff Faux

Economic Policy Institute:



Melissa Favreault

Urban Institute:



Karen W. Ferguson

Pension Rights Center:



Douglas Fore

TIAA-CREF Institute:



Jonathan Barry Forman

University of Oklahoma:



Leora Friedberg

University of Virginia:



Robert B. Friedland

Georgetown University:



Don Fullerton

University of Texas at Austin:



William G. Gale

The Brookings Institution:



Ron Gebhardtsbauer

American Academy of Actuaries:



Thomas Glass

Glass & Co. CPAs:



Jagdeesh Gokhale

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland:



Carol Gold

Internal Revenue Service:



Nancy M. Gordon

Census Bureau, Department of Commerce:



Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas

Princeton University:



Brian Graff

American Capital Strategies:



Matthew Greenwald

Matthew Greenwald & Associates, Inc.



Lijia Guo

University of Central Florida:



Alan L. Gustman

Dartmouth College:



Steven Haider

RAND:



Eric Hanushek

Stanford University:



Brian Headd

Small Business Administration:



Joni Hersch

Harvard University:



Roger Hickey

Institute for America’s Future:



Catherine Hill

National Academy of Social Insurance:



Richard Hinz

World Bank (formerly, Department of Labor):



Lorrie L. Hoffman

University of Central Florida:



Karen C. Holden

University of Wisconsin-Madison:



Sarah Holden

Investment Company Institute:



Kevin M. Hollenbeck

W.E. Upjohn Institute:



Martin Holmer

Policy Simulation Group:



Marjorie Honig

City University of New York:



M. Cindy Hounsell

Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement:



Warren Hrung

Department of the Treasury:



Michael D. Hurd

RAND:



Edwin C. Hustead

The Hay Group:



Robert M. Hutchens

Cornell University:



Howard M. Iams

Social Security Administration:



Estelle James

Consultant:



David C. John

Heritage Foundation:



Richard W. Johnson

Urban Institute:



David Joulfaian

Department of the Treasury:



F. Thomas Juster

University of Michigan:



Arthur B. Kennickell

Federal Reserve Board:



Surachai Khitatrakun

University of Wisconsin-Madison:



Kilolo Kijakazi

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:



Geoffrey Kollmann

Congressional Research Service:



Sophie M. Korczyk

Analytical Services:



Marvin H. Kosters

American Enterprise Institute:



Douglas L. Kruse

Rutgers University:



Julia Lane

Urban Institute:



Annamaria Lasardi

Dartmouth College:



Ronald Lee

University of California, Berkeley:



Jules Lichtenstein

AARP:



Jeffrey B. Liebman

Harvard University:



Dennis Logue

Price College:



Robin Lumsdaine

Brown University:



David A. Macpherson

Florida State University:



Brigitte C. Madrian

University of Chicago:



Joyce Manchester

Social Security Administration:



Charles F. Manski

Northwestern University:



Ann A. McDermed

North Carolina State University:



Andrew Metrick

University of Pennsylvania:



Daniel J. Mitchell

Heritage Foundation:



Olivia S. Mitchell

University of Pennsylvania:



H. Fred Mittelstaedt

University of Notre Dame:



Catherine Phillips Montalto

Ohio State University:



James H. Moore

Social Security Administration:



Kathryn L. Moore

University of Kentucky:



Brent R. Moulton

Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce:



James Musumeci

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale:



Randall J. Olsen

Ohio State University:



Van Doorn Ooms

Committee for Economic Development:



Peter R. Orszag

The Brookings Institution:



Beverly J. Orth

William M. Mercer, Inc:



Michael Packard

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation:



Michael G. Palumbo

Federal Reserve Board:



Constantijn W. A. Panis

RAND:



Jonathan A. Parker

Princeton University:



Donald O. Parsons

George Washington University:



Christina Paxson

Princeton University:



Cynthia D. Perry

Massachusetts Institute of Technology:



Pamela J. Perun

Urban Institute:



Joseph S. Piacentini

Employee Benefits Security Administration:



Department of Labor:



Christopher Polk

Northwestern University:



James Poterba

Massachusetts Institute of Technology:



Elizabeth T. Powers

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:



Patrick J. Purcell

Congressional Research Service:



John W. R. Phillips

Social Security Administration:



Anna M. Rappaport

William M. Mercer, Inc.



Robert R. Reed III

University of Kentucky:



Cordelia W. Reimers

Hunter College:



John C. Rother

AARP:



John E. Sabelhaus

Congressional Budget Office:



Dallas L. Salisbury

EBRI:



Andrew A. Samwick

Dartmouth College:



Thomas R. Saving

Texas A & M University:



Patricia L. Scahill

Ernst & Young LLP:



Sylvester J. Schieber

Watson Wyatt Worldwide:



Robert F. Schoeni

University of Michigan:



James H. Schultz

Brandeis University (retired):



John C. Scott

American Benefits Council:



Lois B. Shaw

Institute for Women’s Policy Research:



Stuart A. Sirkin

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation:



Jonathan S. Skinner

Dartmouth College:



Timothy A. Smeeding

Syracuse University:



Kent Smetters

Wharton School:



Karen E. Smith

Urban Institute:



James P. Smith

RAND:



Paul Smith

Department of the Treasury:



Ralph Smith

Congressional Budget Office:



Frank P. Stafford

University of Michigan:



Norman Stein

University of Alabama:



Thomas L. Steinmeier

Texas Tech University:



C. Eugene Steuerle

Urban Institute:



Ann Huff Stevens

Yale University:



Annika E. Sundén

Boston College:



Richard M. Suzman

National Institute on Aging:



Kenn B. Tacchino

Widener University:



Albert Teplin

Federal Reserve Board (Retired):



Lawrence H. Thompson

Urban Institute:



Shripad Tuljapurkar

Mountain View Research:



Cori E. Uccello

Urban Institute:



Jack L. VanDerhei

Temple University:



Steven F. Venti

Dartmouth College:



Alice Wade

Social Security Administration:



Daniel Weinberg

Census Bureau, Dept. of Commerce:



David R. Weir

University of Michigan:



Joseph White

Case Western Reserve University:



William J. Wiatrowski

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor:



Joshua L. Wiener

Oklahoma State University:



Ernest Wilcox

Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce:



Samuel H. Williamson

Miami University:



Robert J. Willis

University of Michigan:



Doug A. Wolf

Syracuse University:



Aliya Wong

Thelen Reid & Priest, LLP:



Jing Jian Xiao

University of Rhode Island:



Paul J. Yakoboski

American Council of Life Insurers:



Sheila R. Zedlewski

Urban Institute:



Stephen P. Zeldes

Columbia University:



[End of section]



Appendix IV: Views of GAO’s Expert Panel on Retirement Income Data 

Needs:



This appendix provides the summary of discussion by members of an 

expert panel that we convened on retirement income data needs on 

September 10, 2002. The panel consisted of 11 nationally recognized 

experts who, during a day-long meeting, discussed the issues the 

federal government should address in order to improve the quality of 

retirement income data statistics. All the ideas presented in this 

appendix may not represent the view of every member of the panel. 

Moreover, these ideas should not be considered to be our views.



Members of Our Expert Panel:



The following individuals were members of our expert panel on 

retirement income data:



* Eric Engen, Resident Scholar, The American Enterprise Institute:



* Melissa Favreault, Research Associate, The Urban Institute:



* Nancy Gordon, Associate Director for Demographic Programs, US Census 

Bureau:



* Alan Gustman, Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College:



* Richard Hinz, Chief Economist and Director of Policy and Research, 

EBSA, Department of Labor (now at the World Bank):



* Howard Iams, Director, Division of Policy Evaluation, Office of 

Policy, Social Security Administration:



* John Sabelhaus, Unit Chief, Long-Term Modeling Group, Congressional 

Budget Office:



* Dallas Salisbury, President, Employee Benefit Research Institute:



* Jack VanDerhei, Associate Professor, Department of Risk, Insurance & 

Healthcare Management, Fox School of Business and Management, Temple 

University:



* William Wiatrowski, Chief, Compensation Data Analysis and Planning 

Division, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor:



* Robert Willis, Professor of Economics, Institute for Social Research, 

University of Michigan:



Views of the Panelists:



The panel members discussed a number of issues the federal government 

needs to address in order to improve the quality of retirement income 

statistics. Specifically, panelists discussed actions and strategies 

the federal government could undertake related to (1) improving 

matching of survey and administrative data, (2) improving access to 

administrative data, and (3) improving the quality of employer data.



Need for Better Matched Data:



Panelists said that a significant amount of the needed information 

about American workers and pension behavior is already being collected 

in government and private surveys and government administrative 

reports. While no one single survey or report collects all the pension 

information panels expressed interest in, they said that some household 

surveys could be linked with administrative report data from employers. 

Specifically, panelists discussed the following:



* The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) a household 

survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census, has information on 

demographic characteristics, labor force participation, and detailed 

information on income, including some basic pension information. The 

SIPP does not gather detailed information about the characteristics of 

these pensions.[Footnote 44]



* Summary Plan Descriptions (SPD), prepared by employers as required 

under ERISA, provide detailed information about the characteristics of 

the pension plans that they provide to their employees.



* In the past, the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which is 

primarily a household survey conducted by the University of Michigan, 

has matched survey data from households who permitted the Social 

Security Administration to provide Social Security earnings records and 

benefit records, the National Death Index, and to Medicare records for 

those individuals who are Medicare eligible. HRS records also have been 

matched to SPDs obtained either from Labor or from employers.



* The panelists were interested in the information available from the 

1979 National Longitudinal Survey, which is sponsored by the Bureau of 

Labor Statistics and gathers a wide range of information over a long 

time period. Panelists felt that this information could be potentially 

be useful because the participants, who initially participated as 

youth, are now approaching retirement age, which would give researchers 

access to a lifetime of data.



* In addition to matching currently being done, some panelists said 

that they were interested in matching existing pension information to 

other sources of employer information and public financial data, such 

as information from reports filed with the SEC and available, for 

example, from Compustat.



Limitations on Access to Data:



Members of our expert panel felt that there are several sources of 

administrative data that could give researchers valuable information, 

especially those that could be linked, but legal and logistic 

restrictions and limitations prevent access to some of this pension 

data. Specifically, panelists discussed different types of limitations 

to access.



Legal Restrictions:



* The Federal Code Title 13, Section 9 sets very specific limitations 

on the access to any data identifying individuals gathered by the 

Census Bureau and any data that are linked to Census data has the Title 

13 limitation “attached” to it as a result.[Footnote 45]



* Individual records from the IRS have some access restrictions similar 

to those of the Census Bureau except that legislation allows specified 

agencies access to certain tax return records.[Footnote 46]



* As a result of amendments to ERISA legislation SPDs are no longer 

routinely collected by Labor.



Fragmented Retirement Data Responsibilities Contributes to Data 

Shortcomings:



* The responsibility for gathering and analyzing pension data is 

fragmented between different government agencies. There is no central 

agency responsible for retirement data - it is fragmented between the 

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Labor and IRS. As a result, 

individual agencies do not have the incentive to provide access to 

information or to collect statistics for research purposes.



* While Labor’s regulations specify that employers must supply SPDs if 

requested, it does not specify that employers must have a copy of the 

SPDs. As a result, researchers who request SPDs from employers are 

frequently told that the Plan Administrator has the documents. The Plan 

Administrators in turn tell researchers that they have no authority for 

providing them to anyone except plan participants.



* Since 1980, OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has 

provided government wide leadership and oversight of efforts to reduce 

the burden on respondents to government information collection, 

including statistical surveys”. This “reduction” effort has meant that 

some research data previously collected in administrative reports has 

been eliminated.



Other Suggestions for Improving Access to Data:



The expert panelists made many suggestions for improving access to 

pension data. More specifically, panelists discussed the following:



* It was suggested that agencies with access to data, such as Labor, 

take advantage of improvements in technology to require and provide 

electronic copies of Form 5500s and SPDs.



* Panel experts suggested that some sort of license be issued for 

research vehicles (such as the SCF, the SIPP and the HRS) to have legal 

access to employer pension information, provided that they take 

measures to ensure confidentiality.[Footnote 47]



* Panelists suggested creating more research data centers to match 

otherwise restricted data, including Census Bureau data. They suggested 

changing legislation so that the Census Bureau’s data would not make 

everything subject to Title 13. The Census Bureau, however, is 

concerned about possible reidentification issues.[Footnote 48]



* Panelists suggested studying more closely the Census Bureau’s results 

in its experimentation with the development of “synthetic data” in the 

LEHD program, a technique in which many relationships between variables 

are maintained in a data set, but in a manner that makes it impossible 

to identify specific individuals.[Footnote 49] Panelists also 

cautioned, however, that in many cases these techniques are not 

workable and researchers will need access to the original survey data.



Restricted Access Sites Have Provided Some Increased Opportunities for 

Access to Survey Records and Matched Files:



Experts discussed research data centers, operated by several Federal 

agencies and private survey organizations, as an effective technique to 

make data not available because of confidentiality restrictions more 

available to researchers, but with certain restrictions. While the data 

centers provide opportunities for conducting research with survey 

records or matching records between surveys or with administrative 

records, experts said that there are limitations to the data centers, 

which make data much more difficult to access. Specifically, panelists 

discussed the following:



* Restricted access sites are a useful means of allowing confidential 

information to be accessed by researchers, subject to certain 

restrictions.



* A federal storage data center where a number of federal data sets 

could be brought together could allow agencies to share some otherwise 

inaccessible information.



* Data centers could aid the work that researchers are doing by storing 

research already conducted in the data center.



* The Census Bureau, which operates Research Data Centers in eight 

locations throughout the country, allows researchers with pre-approved 

projects to use confidential economic and demographic survey data, such 

as SIPP, for which either no public-use version is available, or the 

public-use version does not contain the information required by the 

researcher. While researchers can access these data at the centers, 

they are not allowed to remove individual records from the data center. 

This restriction prohibits researchers from matching Census Bureau data 

with data sets available to researchers, unless those data are imported 

into the data center.



* BLS has a similar data center located in Washington, D.C. in which 

data extracted from SPDs collected as part of the National Compensation 

Survey are stored. As with the Census Bureau centers, there are 

limitations on who can access this information and restrictions on 

removing data from the data center.



* Because confidential data cannot be removed from either the BLS or 

the Census Bureau data centers, it is currently not possible for 

researchers to match data sets from the two agencies.



More Employer Information Needed on the Value and Provisions of 

Employer-Provided Pensions:



There was wide agreement on the panel that greater access to employer 

information was needed to accurately capture the value and provisions 

of employer-provided pensions. More specifically, panelists discussed 

the following:



* Employee-provided information about pensions is not a viable source 

because individuals often do not have a good understanding of the value 

or characteristics of pensions. In addition, agencies expressed concern 

about the impact of additional questions on nonresponse, and it may be 

difficult to obtain OMB approval for adding questions to statistical 

surveys or to administrative reports.



* Valuable information on the value and characteristics of employer 

pension information is already collected by the Department of Labor on 

the Form 5500s.



* Through the LEHD program, the Census Bureau has been trying to link 

together employer information with data from surveys.



* Agencies have concerns about maintaining the privacy and 

confidentiality of data. For example, there was concern that linking 

SIPP information about individuals with Form 5500 files or summary plan 

descriptions could facilitate the reidentification of individual data 

reported to the Census Bureau. As a result, those linked data would be 

available only within the data centers.



[End of section]



Appendix V: Characteristics of Selected Surveys for Analysis of 

Retirement Income and Wealth:



Below is a table highlighting some of the features of selected surveys 

pertinent to the analysis of retirement income and projection of future 

retirees’ income.[Footnote 50]



Table 11: Summary Table of Selected Survey Data Sources:



[See PDF for image



[End of table]



[End of section]



Appendix VI: Comments from the Department of Commerce:



THE SECRETARY OF COMMERCE Washington, D.C. 20230:



MAR 4 2003:



Ms. Barbara D. Bovbjerg, Director Education, Workforce, and Income 

Security Issues:



U.S. General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548:



Dear Ms. Bovbjerg:



The U.S. Department of Commerce appreciates the opportunity to comment 

on the General Accounting Office’s draft report entitled Retirement 

Income Data: Improvements Could Better Support Analysis of Future 

Retirees’ Prospects. The Department of Commerce has no major comments 

to the report. However, we have enclosed suggestions for clarifying the 

report.



Sincerel:



Donald L. Evans:



Enclosure:



[End of section]



Appendix VII: Comments from the Department of Labor:



U.S. Department of Labor

200 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington D.C. 20210:



March 12, 2003:



Ms. Barbara D. Bovbjerg Director:



Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues United States General 

Accounting Office 441 G Street, N.W., Room 5930 Washington, D.C. 20548:



Dear Ms. Bovbjerg:



We have reviewed the draft report prepared by the General Accounting 

Office (GAO) entitled, Retirement Income Data: Improvements Could 

Better Support Analysis of Future Retirees’ Prospects (GAO-03-337). 

Based upon our review of the report, we are providing you with the 

following comments. Technical comments have already been provided 

directly to your staff.



GAO Recommendation Number 1: “To help provide the data needed to inform 

important policy decisions concerning retirement programs, the 

Secretary of Labor should direct the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 

to prepare a plan to improve data for analyzing retirement income and 

wealth in coordination with ... [other agencies,”:



Experience indicates that there are a number of concerns that must be 

recognized in attempting the types of coordination called for in this 

recommendation. Much of the coordination that retirement income 

researchers have suggested involves linking data that typically are 

collected from individuals (such as demographics and wealth 

accumulation) with data typically collected from employers (such as 

details of retirement benefit plans and the costs associated with those 

plans). Past efforts at coordination of these types of data from 

employers and employees by different agencies have had only limited 

success, due to privacy concerns and other issues.



Coordination activities such as those recommended that have taken place 

in the past have often concluded that different surveys exist because 

they have - quite appropriately -different missions. For example, 

surveys of employer-provided retirement income benefits conducted by 

BLS are part of the Bureau’s mission to report on all types of 

compensation provided to persons in the labor force. Surveys conducted 

by other agencies may be directed toward total wealth accumulation by 

individuals or toward all sources of retirement income, regardless of 

whether the income comes from an employer-sponsored plan. The 

operational, statistical, and data confidentiality environments of 

these different data-gathering programs make coordination of surveys a 

daunting task.



Further, the type of planning and coordination activities envisioned in 

the recommendation usually are the purview of the Office of Management 

and Budget’s Office of Statistical Policy. BLS and other statistical 

agencies routinely participate in such activities as envisioned in this 

GAO recommendation under OMB direction. BLS could participate in the 

coordination effort as described in the recommendation, but the extra 

demands placed on staff will not be negligible.



GAO Recommendation Number 2: “To facilitate plan participants’ 

beneficiaries’ and analysts’ timely access to information about 

employer-provided pension plans the Secretary of Labor should obtain 

from plan administrators electronic films of all SPDs and summaries of 

material modifications required by ERISA and make them publicly 

available in electronic form.”:



Although the recommendation that the Employee Benefits Security 

Administration (EBSA)I resume the collection of SPDs in electronic form 

could help BLS in its attempt to obtain plan provision data, especially 

if there were a standard electronic format for such documents, as 

discussed below there are various problems associated with implementing 

such a requirement.



The recommendation that EBSA resume the collection of summary plan 

descriptions is at odds with amendments to ERISA enacted just six years 

ago as part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (TRA’97). As noted in 

GAO’s draft report, TRA’97 amended ERISA to eliminate the requirement 

to file copies of summary plan descriptions and summaries of plan 

changes (collectively SPDs) with EBSA. Congress also eliminated the 

related requirement that EBSA make those documents available to the 

public in its public disclosure room. Although TRA’97 preserved EBSA’s 

authority to make individual requests for copies of SPDs from plan 

administrators, that authority would not support re-imposition of a 

general SPD filing requirement. Furthermore, EBSA issued final 

regulations in 2002 implementing its authority to request SPDs, and 

reiterated in the preamble that EBSA generally intends to limit the 

exercise of its authority to requesting SPDs on behalf of participants 

and beneficiaries.



EBSA’s experience with pre-TRA’97 SPD filings indicated that there was 

insufficient public interest in obtaining copies of SPDs from EBSA’s 

public disclosure room to justify the compliance costs and burdens 

placed on plans. While EBSA maintained approximately 2 million SPDs and 

received over 150,000 SPDs and related documents annually before the 

filing requirement was eliminated by TRA’97, we received only 

approximately 1,000 requests for SPDs in an average year. The 

requesters included participants and beneficiaries, other governmental 

agencies, congressional offices, media representatives, and others.



Accordingly, based on EBSA’s pre-1997 experience, there did not appear 

to be broad-based interest in SPDs on file and analysts generally did 

not appear to treat the collection as a valuable source of research 

data. This situation was due in large part to shortcomings in the type 

of detail, consistency, and timeliness of SPDs that would be required 

for it to be a useful analytic tool. For example, BLS’ experience with 

the collection of SPDs and other data on employer-sponsored retirement 

plans indicates that those representatives of employers who are 

interviewed by BLS staff often do not have sufficient knowledge of the 

plan to be able to provide the desired information. Comparisons of 

information contained in SPDs with information provided by survey 

respondents often yield discrepancies because of the wide variety of 

plan designs and descriptions adopted by plan sponsors.



Although EBSA establishes content as well as readability and similar 

format requirements for SPDs, EBSA is statutorily precluded from 

requiring SPDs be submitted on prescribed forms. An underlying 

rationale was that administrators needed flexibility to present plan 

information in a manner best suited to the particular workplace and 

workforce involved. Due to the resulting diversity that exists among 

SPDs, having copies of SPDs on file, even in electronic form, might not 

provide a usable research database.



Another shortcoming with the SPD filing requirement recommendation is 

that EBSA could not give requesters any assurances that the information 

on file was up to date due to ERISA’s provisions which allow summaries 

of pension plan changes to be furnished up to 210 days after the end of 

the plan year in which a plan amendment or change is adopted. An 

electronic filing requirement would suffer from the same shortcoming.



The GAO report suggests an electronic filing requirement would 

facilitate timely access to information by plan participants and 

beneficiaries, however, EBSA expects that a very small number of 

participants and beneficiaries will ask for SPDs because ERISA already 

requires plan administrators to automatically furnish SPDs to 

participants and beneficiaries within specified time limits set by 

statute in ERISA. Administrators are also required to provide 

additional copies of SPDs to participants and beneficiaries on request. 

Further, if the participant or beneficiary wanted an up to date copy of 

the SPD, EBSA would still be required to communicate with the plan 

administrator to determine whether the copy we had on file was current 

because of the above noted time lag allowed for distributing 

information about pension plan changes.



Implementing GAO’s recommendations would impose costs and burdens on 

employee benefit plans to maintain and file electronic SPDs as well as 

EBSA to establish a system capable of receiving, storing, and 

disclosing the electronically filed documents. Under current law, there 

is no requirement that plan administrators prepare SPDs in electronic 

form. Although EBSA published regulations in April 2002 designed to 

encourage the use of new technologies for disclosing information 

electronically to plan participants, we did not require that plan’s 

maintain electronic versions of their SPDs. Such a mandate would have 

to be imposed to implement GAO’s recommendation. Also, to accommodate 

such an electronic filing requirement, EBSA would have to develop and 

operate a system to receive, process, store and retrieve the electronic 

SPDs. The GAO report does not include estimates of the costs and 

burdens an electronic filing requirement would impose on plan 

administrators and EBSA. At the time the SPD filing requirement was 

eliminated, we estimated the change would reduce the aggregate 

reporting burden on plans, many of which were maintained by small 

employers, by approximately 150,000 burden hours per year.



GAO Recommendation Number 3 : “For plans in place before these new 

filing requirements go into effect and where it is cost-effective the 

Secretary of Labor should use existing authority to obtain copies of 

summary_ plan descriptions and summaries of material modifications in 

cases where analysts working on federally_ conducted or federally-

sponsored research seeks SPDs for statistical purposes. This should 

assist analysts of retirement income in obtaining information about the 

features of employer-sponsored benefit plans that are not 

electronically available.”:



As noted above, EBSA issued final regulations in 2002 implementing its 

authority to request SPDs, and reiterated in the preamble that EBSA 

generally intends to limit the exercise of its authority to requesting 

SPDs on behalf of participants and beneficiaries.	Use of this authority 

for collection of SPDs as part of a Federal government survey (such as 

those conducted by BLS) may be hampered by confidentiality restrictions 

placed on the identity of survey respondents.



In closing, the Department supports exploring less burdensome and more 

effective means of addressing the shortcomings in available data 

identified by GAO’s Expert Panel. We agree that Congress, federal 

agencies, researchers, and others in the private sector need accurate 

data to assess employee benefit, tax, and economic trends and policies. 

Rather than reinstating an electronic variant of an SPD filing 

requirement, the Department would support an effort to identify 

alternative sources of such employee benefit plan information and ways 

to make that information available to researchers.



Thank you for providing us with an opportunity to comment on your draft 

report.



Ann L. Combs Assistant Secretary Employee Benefits Security 

Administration:



Kathleen P. Utgoff Commissioner Bureau of Labor Statistics:



Signed by Ann L. Combs and Kathleen P. Utgoff:



[1] EBSA was formerly the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration.



[2] The GAO electronic filing recommendation appears to repeat a 

comment from a 1993 GAO “Report to Congressional Requesters on 

Management Reform” entitled “GAO’s Comments on the National Performance 

Review’s Recommendations, “ GAO/OCG-94-1. One of the NPR 

recommendations was to eliminate the SPD filing and storage 

requirements. GAO stated in connection with that recommendation “[o]ur 

work indicates that DOL could reduce costs by reducing or eliminating 

storage of Summary Plan Description (SPD) hard copies while continuing 

to provide electronic access to SPDs.” As noted above, however, after 

GAO’s 1993 report, Congress, in 1997 eliminated the SPD filing 

requirement without any provision for continuing an electronic 

collection program.



[3] The GAO report focuses on data shortcomings related to pension 

plans and retirement income. The SPD filing requirement applied more 

generally to ERISA-covered pension and welfare plans. Accordingly, the 

number of requests for pension plan SPDs would be a smaller subset of 

the total annual requests.



[End of section]



Appendix VIII: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:



GAO Contacts:



Alicia Puente Cackley (202) 512-7022

Benjamin Pfeiffer (206) 287-4832:



Staff Acknowledgments:



Timothy Fairbanks, Nicholas Larson, Lynn Musser, Emily Pickrell, and 

Roger Thomas also contributed to this report.



FOOTNOTES



[1] For a discussion of standards for evaluating retirement income 

adequacy, see U.S. General Accounting Office, Social Security: 

Program’s Role in Helping Ensure Income Adequacy, GAO-02-62 

(Washington, D.C.: Nov. 30, 2001).



[2] A defined benefit plan is a type of plan where the sponsor provides 

a guaranteed benefit generally expressed as monthly benefit based on a 

formula that generally combines salary and years of service to the 

company. 



[3] A defined contribution plan is a type of pension that establishes 

individual accounts for employees to which the employer, participants, 

or both make periodic contributions. The benefits are based on employer 

and participant contributions to and investment returns (gains and 

losses) on the individual accounts. 



[4] U.S. General Accounting Office, Cash Balance Plans: Implications 

for Retirement Income, GAO/HEHS-00-207 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 29, 

2000) and Private Pensions: Implications of Conversions to Cash Balance 

Plans, GAO/HEHS-00-185 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 29, 2000).



[5] The IRS administers and enforces tax code provisions concerning 

private pension plans. EBSA enforces Employee Retirement Income 

Security Act (ERISA) pension requirements, and the PBGC insures the 

benefits of participants in defined benefit pension plans that are 

eligible for preferential tax treatment.



[6] For additional information on the Congressional Budget Office’s 

model, see Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office, 

Uncertainty in Social Security’s Long-Term Finances: A Stochastic 

Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 2001). The Social Security 

Administration and others such as EBRI have supported the development 

of other simulation models, such as the Social Security Policy 

Simulation Model (SSASIM) to study the effect of changes in the Social 

Security program and pension law. More recently the Social Security 

Administration and others have supported the development of the GEMINI 

model, a policy microsimulation model developed by the Policy 

Simulation Group. EBRI has developed its own model, the EBRI Retirement 

Income Projection Model.



[7] Constance F. Citro and Eric A. Hanushek, eds., Assessing Policies 

for Retirement Income: Needs for Data, Research and Models (Washington, 

D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997). The panel was sponsored by Labor’s 

EBSA, the National Institute on Aging, PBGC, the Social Security 

Administration, and the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-

College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF) Institute.



[8] Among other things, the E-Government Act of 2002 (P.L. 103-347) 

permits the sharing of information concerning businesses among 

designated statistical agencies and provides for additional safeguards 

to protect the confidentiality of statistical data collected by all 

agencies.



[9] The IRS form titled “Distributions from Pensions, Annuities, 

Retirement or Profit-Sharing Plans, IRAs, Insurance Contracts, etc.” is 

identified as IRS Form 1099-R. The IRS form titled “IRA and Coverdell 

ESA Contribution Information” is identified as IRS Form 5498.



[10] Alan L. Gustman and Thomas L. Steinmeier, What People Don’t Know 

About Their Pensions and Social Security: An Analysis Using Linked Data 

from the Health and Retirement Study (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau 

of Economic Research, 1999). This paper discusses in detail some of the 

problems associated with having respondents provide details of their 

own pensions, as opposed to employers directly providing information.



[11] Form 5500 is a disclosure form that private employers with 

qualified pension plans are required to file with the IRS, Labor’s 

EBSA, and the PBGC. Schedule SSA to the Form 5500, which is not 

publicly disclosable, identifies individuals who leave employment with 

deferred vested benefits. The Social Security Administration uses this 

information.



[12] The ERISA of 1974 is a federal law that set minimum standards for 

pension plans sponsored by private employers. These standards govern 

the management, operation, and funding of the plan. Labor’s EBSA 

enforces these ERISA provisions.



[13] U.S. Department of Labor. Pension and Welfare Benefits 

Administration, Private Pension Plan Bulletin: Abstract of 1998 Form 

5500 Annual Reports, No. 11, Winter 2001-02.



[14] A qualified pension plan is an employer pension plan that receives 

preferential tax treatment in exchange for satisfying certain 

requirements established in the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. 

Employers or employees receive tax benefits for contributions they make 

to qualified plans within certain limits. A nonqualified pension plan 

is an employer-sponsored pension plan that does not meet these 

requirements.



[15] A SEP (402(h) plan is a deferred compensation type retirement plan 

that allows employers and employees to make deductible contributions 

toward an employee’s retirement fund. There are specific rules about 

contribution and deduction limits, which make the plan easier for a 

smaller employer to administer, but less attractive for a larger 

employer. 



[16] A SIMPLE plan (401(k)(11)) is a deferred compensation type 

retirement plan that certain small employers (including self-employed 

individuals) can set up for the benefit of their employees.



[17] U.S. General Accounting Office, Pension and Welfare Benefits 

Administration: Opportunities Exist for Improving Management of the 

Enforcement Program, GAO-02-232 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 3, 2002).



[18] Vesting refers to when a plan participant has earned a right to a 

benefit that cannot be taken away (i.e., a nonforfeitable right to the 

participant’s accrued benefit).



[19] U.S. General Accounting Office, Management Reform: GAO’s Comments 

on the National Performance Review’s Recommendations, GAO/OCG-94-1 

(Washington, D.C.: Dec. 3, 1993).



[20] IRAs authorized by ERISA allow workers to make tax-deductible and 

nondeductible contributions to an individual account for retirement 

savings. 



[21] A rollover contribution is a direct transfer of pension benefits 

received as a lump-sum payment to another tax-qualified retirement plan 

or an IRA free of taxes. In many cases, however, the IRS forms do not 

indicate whether or not distributions were rolled over.



[22] A Roth IRA is a type of individual retirement plan that is similar 

to a traditional IRA except that contributions are not tax deductible, 

and that qualified distributions are tax free.



[23] Keogh plans are retirement plans for self-employed workers, 

authorized by the Self-Employed Individuals Retirement Plan Act of 1962 

(P.L. 87-792).



[24] The SIPP data have, for example, been linked with Social Security 

earnings records except in cases where respondents were unwilling to 

provide their Social Security numbers to the Census Bureau.



[25] SSA statistically matched defined benefit pension plan 

characteristics from the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation to the 

survey responses.



[26] The Federal Interagency Forum on Aging Related Statistics was 

established in 1986, with the goal of bringing together federal 

agencies that share a common interest in improving aging related data. 

Member agencies include: National Institute of Aging, National Center 

for Health Statistics, Census Bureau, Administration on Aging, Agency 

for Healthcare Research and Quality, BLS, Centers for Medicare and 

Medicaid Services, Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Management 

and Budget (OMB), Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and 

Evaluation in the Health and Human Services Administration, and SSA.



[27] Previous legislation includes the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 

(P.L. 96-511) and the Paperwork Reduction Reauthorization Act of 1986 

(P.L. 99-500).



[28] See 13 U.S.C. 9 and 26 U.S.C. 6103. An exception in 26 U.S.C. 

6103(j) authorizes the furnishing of return information to Census “for 

the purpose, but only to the extent necessary in the structuring, of 

censuses and…conducting related statistical activities authorized by 

law.” 



[29] The Census Bureau’s research data centers are located in 

Washington, D.C.; Boston, Massachusetts; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Los 

Angeles, California; Berkeley, California; Durham, North Carolina; Ann 

Arbor, Michigan; and Chicago, Illinois.



[30] Individuals with access are subject to penalties, including fine 

and imprisonment if they disclose any confidential information.



[31] See Eleanor Singer’s study “Public Perceptions of Confidentiality 

and Attitudes Toward Data Sharing By Federal Agencies” in 

Confidentiality, Disclosure, and Data Access: Theory and Practical 

Applications for Statistical Agencies, Pat Doyle, et al., (Amsterdam: 

Elsevier Science B.V., 2001). In some cases after controlling for other 

factors associated with response rates, such as respondents’ age, the 

length of the form, race, and education, privacy concerns were not 

significant predictors of response rates.



[32] B.K. Atrostic et al., “Nonresponse in U.S. Government Household 

Surveys: Consistent Measures, Recent Trends, and New Insights,” Journal 

of Official Statistics, vol. 17 no. 2, 2001, 209-226. 



[33] We have discussed options for protecting privacy and 

confidentiality while conducting record linkage in U.S. General 

Accounting Office, Record Linkage and Privacy: Issues in Creating New 

Federal Research and Statistical Information, GAO-01-126SP 

(Washington, D.C.: April 2001).



[34] 26 CFR Part 301, Federal Register vol. 68, no. 13, January 21, 

2003, p. 2691.The IRS shares responsibility with SSA for protecting the 

confidentiality of Social Security earnings records compiled from W-2 

forms submitted to the IRS.



[35] Critics of these efforts say that these techniques cannot preserve 

all the relationships between variables in a data set. Moreover, the 

techniques are not workable for variables, such as the age of 

retirement, that do not conform to a simple mathematical pattern. The 

frequency at which people retire, for example, is spiked at certain 

ages, such as 60, 62, and 65 years of age, which makes it difficult to 

summarize the data using a statistical formula. One of our panelists 

noted, however, that if only one variable has such characteristics, the 

actual data for that variable could be left as long as other variables 

were masked. 



[36] U.S. Department of Labor, “Proposed Amendments to Summary Plan 

Description Regulations,” Federal Register, vol. 63, no. 174, September 

9, 1998, p. 48384.



[37] We identified these people through literature searches on topics 

related to retirement income data and by asking members of our 

Retirement Advisory Panel for suggested names and in turn asking them 

for additional names.



[38] Constance F. Citro and Eric A. Hanushek, eds., Assessing Policies 

for Retirement Income: Needs for Data, Research and Models (Washington, 

D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997).



[39] The LEHD program, which was started in 1998, is designed to 

evaluate and improve the quality of data collected in the Census 

Bureau’s demographic and economic censuses and surveys through 

longitudinal analysis. The program combines longitudinal micro data 

from federal and state administrative data on employers and employees 

with these census and survey data. In addition to its use to improve 

its census and surveys, the Census Bureau conducts policy-relevant 

research on labor force and employment issues and creates new data 

products. Currently, the LEHD program provides quarterly workforce 

indicators for a number of participating states. The linkage of Form 

5500 data and Census Bureau establishment data is described in Julia 

Lane, et al., “New Uses of Health and Pension Information: The 5500 

file at the Census Bureau, LEHD Technical Paper No. TP-2002-03” 

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, January 2002).



[40] Final regulation, “Disclosure of Return Information to the Bureau 

of the Census, Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, 26 

CFR Part 301,” Federal Register vol. 68, no. 13, January 21, 2003, p. 

2691.



[41] Marc I. Roemer, Assessing the Quality of the March Current 

Population Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation 

Income Estimates, 1990-1996, Income Surveys Branch Housing and 

Household Economics Statistics Division, U.S. Census Bureau 

(Washington, D.C.: June 16, 2000).



[42] U.S. Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 

Fiscal Years 2004-13, (Washington, D.C., January 2003), p. 33.



[43] See for example, R. Curtin, F.T. Juster and J. Morgan, “Survey 

Estimates of Wealth: An Assessment of Quality” in The Measurement of 

Saving, Investment and Wealth, R.E. Lipsey and H.S. Tice, editors, 

National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, 52 

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).



[44] While some employee information is gathered from other surveys, 

the panel felt that the SIPP survey is extremely important for matching 

to administrative records because it gives demographic and labor force 

characteristics not available in most administrative record files. 



[45] The newly enacted E-Government Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-347) extended 

Census type confidentiality restrictions to all data collected in a 

federal statistical survey.



[46] See 26 U.S.C. 6103.



[47] Unlike the Census Bureau, some agencies, such as the National 

Center for Education Statistics, have authority to use a data license 

procedure. Under these licenses, licensees must submit detailed 

research plans, sign disclosure protection agreements, and agree to 

restrictions similar to those by the Bureau of the Census at their 

research data centers. For more detail, see Paul B. Massell and Laura 

Zayatz, “Data Licensing Agreements at U.S. Government agencies and 

Research Organizations,” presented at the International Conference on 

Establishment Surveys-II, Buffalo, N.Y., June 17-21, 2000. 



[48] Implementation of this suggestion would require changing not only 

Title 13 but other laws as well-like the new E-Government Act.



[49] U.S. General Accounting Office, Record Linkage and Privacy: Issues 

in Creating New Federal Research and Statistical Information, 

GAO-01-126SP (Washington, D.C.: April 2001) p. 88 and Federal Committee 

on Statistical Methodology, Report On Statistical Disclosure Limitation 

Methodology, Statistical Policy Working Paper, 22 (Washington, D.C.: 

May 1994).



[50] AHEAD, HRS, and PSID are conducted by university research entities 

with support from federal agencies. The other surveys are conducted by 

federal government agencies.



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