Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment Request; Survey of Income and Program Participation, 68839 [2020-24058]

Agencies

• Census Bureau
• DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

[Federal Register Volume 85, Number 211 (Friday, October 30, 2020)]
[Notices]
[Page 68839]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2020-24058]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Census Bureau


Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the 
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment 
Request; Survey of Income and Program Participation

    The Department of Commerce will submit to the Office of Management 
and Budget (OMB) for clearance the following proposal for collection of 
information under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act.
    Agency: U.S. Census Bureau.
    Title: Survey of Income and Program Participation.
    OMB Control Number: 0607-1000.
    Form Number(s): None.
    Type of Request: Revision of a currently approved collection.
    Number of Respondents: 70,560.
    Average Hours per Response: 63 minutes.
    Burden Hours: 74,088.
    Needs and Uses: The 2018 SIPP collects information about a variety 
of topics including
    demographics, household composition, education, nativity and 
citizenship, health insurance coverage, Medicaid, Medicare, employment 
and earnings, unemployment insurance, assets, child support, 
disability, housing subsidies, migration, Old-Age Survivors and 
Disability Insurance (OASDI), poverty, and participation in various 
government programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program 
(SNAP), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Temporary Assistance 
for Needy Families (TANF). The SIPP sample is nationally 
representative, with an oversample of low-income areas, in order to 
increase the ability to measure participation in government programs.
    The SIPP program provides critical information necessary to 
understand patterns and relationships in income and program 
participation. It will fulfill its objectives to keep respondent burden 
and costs low, maintain high data quality and timeliness, and use a 
refined and vetted instrument and processing system. The SIPP data 
collection instrument maintains the improved data collection experience 
for respondents and interviewers, and focuses on improvements in data 
quality and better topic integration.
    Starting in 2019, the Census Bureau and the Social Security 
Administration (SSA) entered into a joint agreement where both agencies 
support the SIPP program by contributing resources to add, process, 
review, and maintain additional content on marital history, parental 
mortality, retirement and pension, and disability. This joint agreement 
started in September 2019 and goes until September 30, 2023.
    The SIPP instrument is currently written in Blaise and C#. It 
incorporates an Event History Calendar (EHC) design to help ensure that 
the SIPP will collect intra-year dynamics of income, program 
participation, and other activities with at least the same data quality 
as earlier panels. The EHC is intended to help respondents recall 
information in a more natural ``autobiographical'' manner by using life 
events as triggers to recall other economic events. For example, a 
residence change may often occur contemporaneously with a change in 
employment. The entire process of compiling the calendar focuses, by 
its nature, on consistency and sequential order of events, and attempts 
to correct for otherwise missing data.
    Since the SIPP EHC collects information using this 
``autobiographical'' manner for the prior year, due to the coronavirus 
pandemic, select questions were modified to include answer options 
related to the pandemic as well as adding new questions pertaining to 
the pandemic. For instance, we adjusted the question regarding being 
away from work part-time to include being possibly furloughed due to 
coronavirus pandemic business closures. We also added new questions to 
collect information on whether the respondent receive any stimulus 
payments.
    Information quality, as described by the Census Bureau's 
Information Quality Guidelines, is an integral part of the pre-
dissemination review of information released by the Census Bureau. 
Information quality is essential to data collections conducted by the 
Census Bureau and is incorporated into the clearance process required 
by the Paperwork Reduction Act.
    Affected Public: Individuals or Households.
    Frequency: Annually.
    Respondent's Obligation: Voluntary.
    Legal Authority: Title 13, United States Code, Sections 141, 182.
    This information collection request may be viewed at 
www.reginfo.gov. Follow the instructions to view Department of Commerce 
collections currently under review by OMB.
    Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information 
collection should be submitted within 30 days of the publication of 
this notice on the following website www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. 
Find this particular information collection by selecting ``Currently 
under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search 
function and entering either the title of the collection or the OMB 
Control Number 0607-1000.

Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief Information 
Officer, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2020-24058 Filed 10-29-20; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P