An Evaluation of Retirement Income in the CPS ASEC Using IRS Form 1099-R Microdata

Adam Bee, U.S. Census Bureau

In the past several decades, individuals 65 and over have experienced remarkable declines in poverty, from 35.2 percent in 1959 to 9.0 percent in 2011. These declines in official poverty rates, however, are based on self-reported income data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). In this paper I evaluate the quality of the retirement income data in the 2010 CPS ASEC by matching it to individual microdata from IRS 1099-R forms filed with tax returns in the tax year 2009. Taking 1099-R values as “truth,” I find that the CPS ASEC measures retirement income well.