SIPP collects information on respondents that receive Social Security income on behalf of a child. Variables capturing this information include ESSCANY, ESSCMNYN, and ESSCAMT. Beginning in 2018, SIPP also includes three variables that can be used to link adults receiving this income with the child beneficiary:

• ESSKDCOVFLG, which is equal to 1 on the record of child beneficiaries, flagging those children covered by Social Security.
• ESSCADLTPTR, which is on the record of child beneficiaries. This variable holds the PNUM of the adult receiving Social Security income on behalf of the child, and can be used to link children to adults.
• ESSKIDCTR, which is on the adult’s record. This variable counts the number of children on whose behalf the adult receives Social Security income.

The SIPP survey instrument collects these data at the person level. While some edits are performed on these variables to reflect person-month variation due to changes in household composition for a few respondents, discrepancies between the monthly receipt indicators on the adult’s record and the monthly coverage flags on the child’s record remain. Because of this, the Social Security parent-child linkage variables do not reflect variation in monthly receipt in all cases. Data users should be aware of these inconsistencies when analyzing the Social Security received on behalf of a child data.