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IPE-82-5 1 (1982-07-06)

handle is hein.gao/gaobabdle0001 and id is 1 raw text is: AAAAA UNITED STATES GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE WASHINGTON, D.C. 20548 EVALUATIC0 1Ill111111111111111JULY11111 3-207737 118861 JULY 6, 1982 The Honorable Bruce Chapman Director, Bureau of the Census Dear Mr. Chapman: Subject: IData from the Retirement History Survey An analysis we initiated last year on retirement patterns among the elderly has been terminated because of problems we found in the data. These are data currently being disseminated by the Bureau of the Census under the title The Retirement History Survey (RHS). The purpose of this letter is to inform you of the problems we found and to suggest that you inform all requestors of the RHS data that they contain serious errors. Our study, which we began in July 1980, was to focus on retirement patterns in the general workforce. Specifically, we were interested in why people retire, the overall distributions of their retirement ages, and how their life styles are affected by the decision to retire. We hypothesized that health, economic status, expenditure patterns, and levels of social activity are significant elements in the decision to retire, and we were interested in how these four elements are affected by retirement. We wanted to know, for example, whether health deteriorates after an individual has left the workforce. In search of a data base, we approached the Social Security Administration (SSA) in hopes of using the Retirement History Sur- vey. which seemed ideally suited to our objectives and interests. The RHS consists of data collected by the Bureau of the Census at the request of SSA, in an extensive effort to collect information on issues related to retirement. A panel of approxi- mnately 12,000 individuals was followed into and through the retirement years (59-72 years of age). The Data Users Services Group at Census informed us that Census provides only computer tapes with data for each year--data for 1969. for example, are not on the same tape as data for 1977. Thus, merged tapes of selected items could not be provided to us. Since our analysis required cross-time comparisons, we subsequently arranged for the Center for Aging at Duke University to provide a merged data tape with 341 selected RHS variables. This step was taken at the suggestion of Dr. Lola Irelan who headed the RHS project for SSA. (973163)

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