For the 2018 SIPP, several changes were made to the asset section of the questionnaire:

Checking Accounts

In the 2014 SIPP and prior panels, the SIPP asked separate questions on whether respondents owned “an interest-earning checking account” and “a non-interest-earning (regular) checking account.”   In the 2018 SIPP, in order to simplify the questionnaire, these questions were combined to instead ask whether a respondent owned “a checking account.”  With this change, variables that have been removed from the SIPP dataset are:

• EOWN_ICHK
• EOOWNICHK
• EJSOWNICHK
• EJOOWNICHK
• TOICHKVAL
• TOICHKINC
• TJSICHKVAL
• TJSICHKINC
• TJOICHKVAL
• TJOICHKINC

Variables that have been added to the dataset are:

• TOCHKINC
• TJSCHKINC
• TJOCHKINC

Life Insurance

For the type of life insurance question (variable ELIFE_TYPE), the question text was changed to ask whether the respondent had “any policies that build up a cash value or that [they] could borrow on?  These are sometimes called 'whole life', 'straight life', or 'universal life' policies.”  This change was made in order to define the life insurance concepts earlier on to respondents.  With this change, the ELIFE_TYPE variable answer categories are now 1 for “Yes,” 2 for “No,” and the universe for ELIFE_CVAL is now ELIFE_TYPE=1.  A value of “No” for ELIFE_TYPE indicates the respondent only had term life insurance.

Medical Debt

In the 1984 Panel and Wave 3 of the 1985 Panel, there was a question on whether the respondent had any medical debt.  For the 1986 through 2014 Panels, there was no explicit question on medical debt, and instead medical debt was given as an example of a type of “other debt” a respondent could have in the unsecured liabilities section.   In the 2018 Panel, an explicit question on medical debt was added back into the questionnaire, asking the respondent whether they owed money for “medical bills [they were] unable to pay in full.”  The new medical debt variables are EDEBT_MED and EMED_AMT.