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A Comparison of Employee Benefits Data from the MEPS-IC and Form 5500
September 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-32
This paper compares data on employers\u2019 health and pension offerings from the two sources: publicly available administrative data from Form 5500 filings and survey data from the Insurance Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-IC). The basic findings are that the 5500 filings cover too few health plans to be very useful as a substitute or supplement to the MEPS-IC measure of whether or not employers offer health insurance. The pension information in the 5500 filings is potentially more useful as a supplement to the MEPSIC for research purposes where additional pension information would be useful in studying employers\u2019 decisions to offer health insurance.
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Describing the Form 5500-Business Register Match
January 2003
Working Paper Number:
tp-2003-05
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Health-Related Research Using Confidential U.S. Census Bureau Data
August 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-21
Economic studies on health-related issues have the potential to benefit all Americans. The approaches for dealing with the growth of health care costs and health insurance coverage are ever changing and information is needed on their efficacy. Research on health-related topics has been conducted for about a decade at the Census Bureau\u2019s Center for Economic Studies and the Research Data Centers. This paper begins by describing the confidential business and demographic Census Bureau data products used in this research. The discussion continues with summaries of nearly 30 papers, including how this work has benefited the Census Bureau and its research findings. Some focus on data linkages and assessing data quality, while others address important questions in the employer, public, and individual insurance markets. This research could not have been accomplished with public-use data. The newly available data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and National Center for Health Statistics, as well as additional Census Bureau data now available in the Research Data Centers are also discussed.
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Employer-Sim Microsimulation Model:
Model Development and Application to Estimation of Tax Subsidies to Health Insurance
December 2014
Working Paper Number:
CES-14-46
Employment-related health coverage is the predominant form of health insurance in the nonelderly, US population. Developing sound policies regarding the tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance requires detailed information on the insurance benefits offered by employers as well as detailed information on the characteristics of employees and their familes. Unfortunately, no nationally representative data set contains all of the necessary elements. This paper describes the development of the Employer-Sim model which models tax-based health policies by using data on workers from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS HC) to form synthetic workforces for each establishment in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component (MEPS IC). This paper describes the application of Employer-Sim to estimating tax subsidies to employer-sponsored health insurance and presents estimates of the cost and indcidence of the subsidy for 2008. The paper concludes by discussing other potential applications of the Employer-Sim model.
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COMPARING METHODS FOR IMPUTING EMPLOYER HEALTH INSURANCE CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY
August 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-41
The degree to which firms contribute to the payment of workers' health insurance premiums is an important consideration in the measurement of income and for understanding the potential impact of the 2010 Affordable Care Act on employment-based health insurance participation. Currently the U.S. Census Bureau imputes employer contributions in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey based on data from the 1977 National Medical Care Expenditure Survey. The goal of this paper is to assess the extent to which this imputation methodology produces estimates reflective of the current distribution of employer contributions. The paper uses recent contributions data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Insurance Component to estimate a new model to inform the imputation procedure and to compare the resulting distribution of contributions. These new estimates are compared with those produced under current production methods across employee and employer characteristics.
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Measuring Income of the Aged in Household Surveys: Evidence from Linked Administrative Records
June 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-32
Research has shown that household survey estimates of retirement income (defined benefit pensions and defined contribution account withdrawals) suffer from substantial underreporting which biases downward measures of financial well-being among the aged. Using data from both the redesigned 2016 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) and the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), each matched with administrative records, we examine to what extent underreporting of retirement income affects key statistics such as reliance on Social Security benefits and poverty among the aged. We find that underreporting of retirement income is still prevalent in the CPS ASEC. While the HRS does a better job than the CPS ASEC in terms of capturing retirement income, it still falls considerably short compared to administrative records. Consequently, the relative importance of Social Security income remains overstated in household surveys'53 percent of elderly beneficiaries in the CPS ASEC and 49 percent in the HRS rely on Social Security for the majority of their incomes compared to 42 percent in the linked administrative data. The poverty rate for those aged 65 and over is also overstated'8.8 percent in the CPS ASEC and 7.4 percent in the HRS compared to 6.4 percent in the linked administrative data. Our results illustrate the effects of using alternative data sources in producing key statistics from the Social Security Administration's Income of the Aged publication.
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National Experimental Wellbeing Statistics - Version 1
February 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-04
This is the U.S. Census Bureau's first release of the National Experimental Wellbeing Statistics (NEWS) project. The NEWS project aims to produce the best possible estimates of income and poverty given all available survey and administrative data. We link survey, decennial census, administrative, and third-party data to address measurement error in income and poverty statistics. We estimate improved (pre-tax money) income and poverty statistics for 2018 by addressing several possible sources of bias documented in prior research. We address biases from 1) unit nonresponse through improved weights, 2) missing income information in both survey and administrative data through improved imputation, and 3) misreporting by combining or replacing survey responses with administrative information. Reducing survey error substantially affects key measures of well-being: We estimate median household income is 6.3 percent higher than in survey estimates, and poverty is 1.1 percentage points lower. These changes are driven by subpopulations for which survey error is particularly relevant. For house holders aged 65 and over, median household income is 27.3 percent higher and poverty is 3.3 percentage points lower than in survey estimates. We do not find a significant impact on median household income for householders under 65 or on child poverty. Finally, we discuss plans for future releases: addressing other potential sources of bias, releasing additional years of statistics, extending the income concepts measured, and including smaller geographies such as state and county.
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Why are employer-sponsored health insurance premiums higher in the public sector than in the private sector?
February 2019
Working Paper Number:
CES-19-03
In this article, we examine the factors explaining differences in public and private sector health insurance premiums for enrollees with single coverage. We use data from the 2000 and 2014 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Insurance Component, along with decomposition methods, to explore the relative explanatory importance of plan features and benefit generosity, such as deductibles and other forms of cost sharing, basic employee characteristics (e.g., age, gender, and education), and unionization. While there was little difference in public and private sector premiums in 2000, by 2014, public premiums had exceeded private premiums by 14 to 19 percent. We find that differences in plan characteristics played a substantial role in explaining premium differences in 2014, but they were not the only, or even the most important, factor. Differences in worker age, gender, marital status, and educational attainment were also important factors, as was workforce unionization.
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Longitudinal Establishment And Enterprise Microdata (LEEM) Documentation
May 1998
Working Paper Number:
CES-98-09
This paper introduces and documents the new Longitudinal Enterprise and Establishment Microdata (LEEM) database, which has been constructed by Census' Economic Planning and Coordination Division under contract to the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration. The LEEM links three years (1990, 1994, and 1995) of basic data for each private sector establishment with payroll in any of those years, along with data on the firm to which the establishment belongs each year. The LEEM data will facilitate both broader and more detailed analysis of patterns of job creation and destruction in the U.S., as well as research on the structure and dynamics of U.S. businesses. This paper provides documentation of the construction of LEEM data, summary data on most variables in the database, comparisons of the annual data with that of the nearly identical County Business Patterns, and distributions of establishments and their employment by the size of their firms. This is followed by a simple analysis of changes over time in the attributes of surviving establishments, and a brief discussion of turnover (business births and deaths) in the population and gross changes in employment associated with both establishment turnover and with surviving establishments. It concludes with a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the LEEM.
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NEW DATA FOR DYNAMIC ANALYSIS: THE LONGITUDINAL ESTABLISHMENT AND ENTERPRISE MICRODATA (LEEM) FILE
December 1999
Working Paper Number:
CES-99-18
Until now, research on U.S. business activities over time has been hindered by the lack of accurate and comprehensive longitudinal data. The new Longitudinal Establishment and Enterprise Microdata (LEEM) are tremendously rich data that open up numerous possibilities for dynamic analyses of businesses in the U.S. economy. It is the first nationwide high-quality longitudinal database that covers the majority of employer businesses from all sectors of the economy. Due to the confidential nature of these data, the file is located at the Center for Economic Studies in the U.S. Bureau of the Census. To access the data, researchers must submit an acceptable proposal to CES and become sworn Census researchers. This paper describes the LEEM file, the variables contained on the file, and current uses of the data.
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