ASEC: social security income from INCUNERN (prior to 1968)

I’m trying to get social security income over time (1962-2022) but it seems that social security income prior to 1968 is counted in the INCUNERN variable, which includes income from non-wage, non-business, and non-farm sources. Is there a way I can get the amount of social security income from INCUNERN? I see that there’s the GOTSS variable that specifies if a respondent received any social security income but I don’t think I could distinguish social security income from other sources in INCUNERN.

I agree that GOTSS will not help you differentiate the amount received from social security versus other sources in these years. There are a number of unharmonized variables that may help you tease this out for some people. UH_SUNERN_A1 (1962) and UH_SUNERN_A2 (1963-1967) are a coarse categorization of the source of the income included in INCUNERN (social security only, interest only, dividends only). UH_DUNERN_A1 (1962) and UH_DUNERN_A2 (1963, 1966-1967; all cases are missing in 1964 and 1965) are a more detailed version (e.g., if the person received social security and interest income). Note that knowing how the income is allocated doesn’t help you determine the relative amounts for each source in cases where the person reports more than one source for INCUNERN, but you may be willing to make assumptions about the distribution of these different income types.

Good to know, thank you Kari!

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