The most significant feature of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA or the welfare reform) has directed Bureau of the Census (BOC) to undertake the task of collecting data that permits researchers and analysts to measure the impact of the welfare reform.  The most significant feature of the welfare reform may be the shift of the burden of welfare program administration from the Federal government to state governments. To this end, BOC is conducting the Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD).  The SPD represents the most substantial effort toward creating a nationally representative longitudinal data set that can be used to examine how the welfare reform has affected families and children who were previously dependent on the Federal entitlement programs, over a ten-year period.

Based on the objective of the SPD described above, the current SPD 1997 (Bridge) sample was drawn from the samples of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) Panel 1992 and 1993. The current SPD sample selected only  the sample households that were respondent ones in the last interview waves of the SIPP Panels 1992 and 1993. Some of our SPD data users have stated that the SPD data will not be viable because we have not followed every sample person from the SIPP Panel 1992 and 1993.  As an initial step toward resolving this concern, an exploratory attrition study was conducted. Hereinafter, this study will be referred to as the SPD Exploratory Attrition Study (EAS). The objective of the SPD EAS is to conduct a test designed to measure the possible success rate and cost of tracking down the SIPP Panel 1992 and 1993 sample people who attrited as far in the past as five or six years ago and lived in a household with a total household income below 200% of the poverty threshold.