99999999 = N.I.U. (Not in Universe).

The Census Bureau applies different disclosure avoidance measures across time for individuals with high income in this variable. Detailed explanations of these methods, topcodes, and replacement value and swap value thresholds are available here.

Description

INCRETIR indicates how much pre-tax income (if any) the respondent received from all retirement income sources during the past year. Pension or retirement income from a previous employer or union, or from other retirement income (excluding Social Security and Veterans' Administration payments) are included as sources prior to 2019. During this period, the survey questionnaire listed the following types of retirement income: company or union pension, including profit sharing; annuities; U.S. military retirement; federal government employee pensions; state or local government employee pensions; U.S. Railroad Retirement; regular payments from annuities or paid-up insurance policies; and other sources such as IRA or KEOUGH accounts.

Beginning in 2019, income from retirement accounts, pension plans, and annuities are split into separate variables. INCRETIR includes only income from retirement accounts, and not pension plans or annuities. Retirement account income from 401k, 403b, Roth IRA, regular IRA, KEOGH, and Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) plans are included.

Amounts are expressed as they were reported to the interviewer; users must adjust for inflation using Consumer Price Index adjustment factors.

Comparability

Along with the effect of inflation and shifts in the variable universe, there were changes in the income categories included in INCRETIR.

For 1962-1967, income sources included in INCRETIR are subsumed in the INCUNERN variable, which encompasses all income from sources other than wages and salaries (INCWAGE) and self-employment income from non-farm businesses (INCBUS) and farms (INCFARM).

For 1968-1975, government payments later classified as components of INCRETIR would be included in the INCGOV variable; retirement income from non-government sources would largely be included in INCALOTH during the same years.

Railroad Retirement payments were included in INCSS for 1968-1979, but were counted toward INCRETIR beginning in 1980.

Beginning in 2019, income from retirement accounts, pension plans, and annuities are split into separate variables. INCRETIR includes only income from retirement accounts, and not pension plans or annuities. Income from pension plans during the previous year is available in INCPEN1 and INCPEN2; income from annuities is available in INCRANN. Also beginning in 2019, only those respondents age 58 and over who received income from retirement accounts last year are included in INCRETIR, where previously those 15 and older are included in this total. Income from retirement accounts for persons age 15 and older are available in INCRET1 and INCRET2. For these reasons, INCRETIR is NOT comparable before and after 2019.

Comparability with IPUMS-USA

Universe

Flags

Unharmonized Variables

• UH_DBTNVAL_A1
• UH_INCRET_A1
• UH_INCRET_A2
• UH_INCRET_A3
• UH_INCRET_A4