How CBO Adjusts for Underreporting of Means-Tested Transfers in Its Distributional Analyses
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The document presents a summary of a presentation on how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) adjusts for underreporting of means-tested transfers in its distributional analyses, particularly using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). It highlights the methods employed by the CBO to ensure accurate accounting of income and transfer distributions, emphasizing the importance of adjustments to reflect the true impact of these transfers on income inequality. The paper also discusses the strengths and limitations of the CBO's adjustment methods and the implications of these adjustments on the understanding of income distribution and inequality over time.
How CBO Adjusts for Underreporting of Means-Tested Transfers in Its Distributional Analyses
- 1. Presentation at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2021 Consumption Symposium September 23, 2021 Bilal Habib Tax Analysis Division How CBO Adjusts for Underreporting of Means-Tested Transfers in Its Distributional Analyses For more information about the conference, see www.bls.gov/cex/2021-consumption-symposium-agenda.htm.
- 2. 1 Background
- 3. 2 The Congressional Budget Office regularly produces a report on the distribution of household income, means-tested transfers, and federal taxes. For each report, the agency draws data on transfers from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS). To analyze the distribution of means-tested transfers, CBO must have a complete accounting of those transfers, with enough precision for quintile-level distributional analysis. Why Does CBO Adjust for Underreporting?
- 4. 3 CBO adjusts administrative totals to make them compatible with the way data are reported in the CPS. For details, see Bilal Habib, How CBO Adjusts for Survey Underreporting of Transfer Income in Its Distributional Analyses, Working Paper 2018-07 (Congressional Budget Office, July 2018), www.cbo.gov/publication/54234. CPS = Current Population Survey; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; SSI = Supplemental Security Income. Underreporting of Means-Tested Transfers in the CPS Underreporting of transfers in the CPS has increased over time. Without adjustment, CPS-based analyses would understate income growth at the bottom of the distribution and the role of transfers in reducing income inequality. 0 20 40 60 80 100 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015 2018 Percent Housing Assistance Medicaid SSI SNAP Overreporting Underreporting
- 5. 4 CBO adjusts administrative totals to make them compatible with the way data are reported in the Current Population Survey. For details, see Bilal Habib, How CBO Adjusts for Survey Underreporting of Transfer Income in Its Distributional Analyses, Working Paper 2018-07 (Congressional Budget Office, July 2018), www.cbo.gov/publication/54234. Size of Major Means-Tested Transfer Programs Program Total Benefits in 2018 (Billions of dollars) Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) 528 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) 58 Supplemental Security Income (SSI) 55 Housing Assistance (Includes rental assistance and public housing) 41
- 6. 5 ▪ Administrative matching: Offers near-perfect accounting, but administrative microdata are not widely available. ▪ Rules-based simulation: Offers precise estimates at the micro level but requires a significant research investment. ▪ Regression-based estimation (CBO’s approach): Offers tractability for multiple programs over a long time series but is less precise at the micro level. Common Approaches to Adjusting for Underreporting
- 8. 7 ▪ Use administrative data to set targets that reflect the CPS sampling frame. – Subtract program participants who are institutionalized. – Convert average monthly or point-in-time receipt to “ever-on” receipt. – Convert fiscal year spending levels to calendar year targets. ▪ Use CPS data on reporting units to estimate the probability of receipt for all units. – Run probit regressions for each year and population subgroup. – Independent variables include income level and composition, labor force participation, demographics, and household characteristics. ▪ Impute transfer receipt on the basis of estimated probabilities until the target is reached. – An algorithm assigns receipt to units in proportion to their predicted probability of receipt. CBO’s Regression-Based Imputation Method
- 9. 8 CPS = Current Population Survey; FPL = federal poverty level; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Share of Households Receiving SNAP Benefits, by Income, 2018 Most imputed recipients of SNAP benefits are at lower FPL ratios. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 325 350 375 400 425 450 Household Income as a Percentage of the Federal Poverty Level CBO (Imputed Plus Reported) CPS (Reported Only) Percent
- 10. 9 After the total number of recipients matches the administrative targets for all subgroups and programs, each unit is assigned a benefit amount. ▪ Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI): CBO derives the average benefit per recipient on the basis of income and demographic groups and assigns those averages to new recipients. ▪ Medicaid: CBO derives the average cost to the government per recipient from administrative data by eligibility category and assigns those averages to all recipients. ▪ Housing assistance: CBO estimates benefits for each reporting unit on the basis of location, household size and structure, and fair market rents determined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. No additional households are imputed to be recipients. Assigning Benefit Amounts
- 11. 10 For more details, see Sheila Zedlewski and Linda Giannarelli, TRIM: A Tool for Social Policy Analysis (Urban Institute, May 2015), https://tinyurl.com/TRIMurban2015 (PDF, 729 KB); and Michael Davern and others, “A Partially Corrected Estimate of Medicaid Enrollment and Uninsurance: Results From an Imputational Model Developed off Linked Survey and Administrative Data,” Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, vol. 34, no. 4 (December 2009), pp. 219–240, http://doi.org/10.3233/JEM-2009-0324. ▪ The method is straightforward to implement. For example, it doesn’t require a team of researchers to code specific program rules as they evolve. ▪ It is easily scalable across multiple programs over a 40-year time series, and it can be extended to other transfer programs, such as the National School Lunch Program. ▪ The distributional results of CBO’s method are broadly similar at the quintile level to those of the Urban Institute’s Transfer Income Model (which uses a rules-based method) and of Davern and others (which relies on administrative matching). Strengths of CBO’s Adjustment Method
- 12. 11 ▪ As a regression-based method, CBO’s approach assumes that nonreporters have the same characteristics as reporters. ▪ It does not account for false positives. ▪ Its ability to simulate complex policy scenarios is limited. However, it can be augmented by inputs from other CBO models to estimate the effects of some proposed rule changes to transfer programs. Limitations of CBO’s Adjustment Method
- 13. 12 Effects on Aggregate Distributional Outcomes
- 14. 13 All dollar amounts are in 2018 dollars. To calculate growth rates, CBO first converted all dollar amounts to 2018 dollars using the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s price index for personal consumption expenditures. Shaded vertical bars indicate the duration of recessions. * = between zero and $500. Average Income, Means-Tested Transfers, and Federal Taxes, 2018, and Cumulative Growth in Average Income, 1979 to 2018 Means-tested transfers and federal taxes significantly increase the cumulative growth of income after transfers and taxes among households in the lowest quintile.
- 15. 14 These results differ from those published in CBO’s Distribution of Household Income reports because they use data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) only, whereas those reports use a combination of CPS data and data from the Internal Revenue Service’s Statistics of Income. Income Inequality, 1979 to 2018 Adding imputed transfers reduces income inequality in CBO’s distributional analyses. The effects on inequality of imputing transfers have increased over time as underreporting has increased. 0.36 0.38 0.4 0.42 0.44 0.46 0.48 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015 2018 Gini Index Income Before Transfers and Taxes (Base income) Base Income Plus Imputed Means-Tested Transfers Base Income Plus Reported Means-Tested Transfers
- 16. 15 CBO released a working paper in 2018 describing its method for imputing means-tested transfers. It included CPS extracts and Stata code to allow researchers to replicate CBO’s results for 1979 through 2016. In May 2020, CBO released a new version of the data and code with the following updates: ▪ It added imputations for 2017 and 2018, ▪ It added imputed values for housing assistance benefits, ▪ It improved estimates of Medicaid and CHIP benefits by accounting for variations in the amount of time enrolled in the program, ▪ It updated recipient and benefit target values for 1979 through 2016, and ▪ It used GitHub as the repository. In the coming months, CBO plans to release an update to that GitHub repository, including imputations for 2019. Public Release of CBO’s Means-Tested Transfer Imputations
- 17. 16 Congressional Budget Office, The Distribution of Household Income, 2018 (August 2021), www.cbo.gov/publication/57061. Congressional Budget Office, “Means-Tested Transfer Imputations” (last updated May 2020), https://github.com/US-CBO/means_tested_transfer_imputations. Congressional Budget Office, Projected Changes in the Distribution of Household Income, 2016 to 2021 (December 2019), www.cbo.gov/publication/55941. Bilal Habib, How CBO Adjusts for Survey Underreporting of Transfer Income in Its Distributional Analyses, Working Paper 2018-07 (Congressional Budget Office, July 2018), www.cbo.gov/publication/54234. Kevin Perese, CBO’s New Framework for Analyzing the Effects of Means-Tested Transfers and Federal Taxes on the Distribution of Income, Working Paper 2017-09 (Congressional Budget Office, December 2017), www.cbo.gov/publication/53345. Related Publications