[Federal Register Volume 86, Number 213 (Monday, November 8, 2021)]
[Notices]
[Pages 61753-61754]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2021-24369]


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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 the following information 
collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for 
review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 
1995, on or after the date of publication of this notice. We invite the 
general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and 
continuing information collections, which helps us

[[Page 61754]]

assess the impact of our information collection requirements and 
minimize the public's reporting burden. Public comments were previously 
requested via the Federal Register on May 19, 2020 during a 60-day 
comment period. This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public 
comments.
    Agency: U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Commerce.
    Title: Survey of Income and Program Participation.
    OMB Control Number: 0607-1000.
    Form Number(s): None.
    Type of Request: Regular submission, Request for a 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 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). In the spring of 2021, as part of 
the American Rescue Plan, the child tax credit was expanded, and the 
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was instructed to pay out monthly 
benefits. The 2022 SIPP instrument will collect receipt of the child 
tax credit payments.
    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 received any stimulus 
payments.
    Affected Public: Individual 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 the 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. 2021-24369 Filed 11-5-21; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P