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New Beneficiary Data System (NBDS)

(released March 1997)
Background

The New Beneficiary Data System (NBDS), developed over the past decade, contains extensive information on the changing circumstances of aged and disabled beneficiaries.

Based initially on a national cross-sectional survey of new beneficiaries in 1982, the original data base has been expanded with information from administrative records and a second round of interviews in 1991. Variables measured in the original New Beneficiary Survey (NBS) include demographic characteristics; employment, marital, and childbearing histories; household composition; health; income and assets; program knowledge; and information about the spouses of married respondents.

The 1991 New Beneficiary Follow-up (NBF) updates marital status, household composition, and the economic profile and contains additional sections on family contacts, postretirement employment, effects of widowhood and divorce, major reasons for changes in economic status, a more extensive section on health, and information on household moves and reasons for moving. Disabled-worker beneficiaries were also asked about their efforts to return to work, experiences with rehabilitation services, and knowledge of SSA work incentive provisions.

The NBDS contains unique measurements that make it valuable not only for studies about Social Security but also for studies of health, economic, labor, gerontological, and welfare issues. It contains objective measures from administrative files of yearly covered earnings from 1951 to 2000, Medicare expenditures from 1984 to 1992, whether an SSI application has ever been made and payment status at 5 points in time, and dates of death as of spring 2001. For studies of health, the Medicare expenditure variables include inpatient hospital costs, outpatient hospital costs, home health care costs, and physicians' charges. The survey data cover functional capacity including ADLs and IADLs. For studies of work in retirement, the survey includes yearly information on extent of work, characteristics of the current or last job, and reasons for working or not working. No other data set has such detailed baseline survey data of a population immediately after their retirement or disability enhanced with subsequent measures over an extended period of time.

1982 New Beneficiary Survey

Documentation.

Note: We have altered the Internet version of the 1982 NBS to meet privacy concerns, and the data differ slightly from the codebook description. Dollar values for income, assets, and earnings have been rounded to 4 digits (left justified), and zeros have been added to maintain the same general value. Geography (Region and SMSA) has been blanked. Alimony income has been merged with other income from relatives outside the household, and the original alimony fields have been blanked. We hope that this causes minimal inconvenience. If there are questions, please contact statistics@ssa.gov.

Data Files. The NBS Public Use data has been divided into four groups: retired beneficiaries, disabled beneficiaries, other aged beneficiaries, and Medicare Only beneficiaries. Each group is available as a ZIP download that extracts to a raw ASCII file.

1991 New Beneficiary Follow-up Survey

Documentation.

Note: We have detected an error in the summary income from assets (Variable FQASSET). The income from private insurance and annuities, questionnaire items 346g, 347g, 348g, 359g, 360g, and 361g (totaled in Variable FQINSUR) was omitted from the summary income from assets (FQASSET), and from the total of income (FQINCOM). When processing income data, please add the FQINSUR variable to the FQASSET and FQINCOME data. Because this affects very few cases, we hope this causes minimal inconvenience. If there are questions concerning this problem, please contact statistics@ssa.gov.

Data. The NBF Public Use data has been divided into four groups: retired beneficiaries, disabled beneficiaries, other aged beneficiaries, and Medicare Only beneficiaries. Each group is further subdivided into data files for respondents and surviving spouses. Each group is available as a ZIP download that extracts to a raw ASCII file.

Administrative Data for the New Beneficiary Data System Respondents and Spouses

Documentation.

Data. The NBDS Public Use Administrative Data has been divided into four groups: Retired beneficiaries, Disabled beneficiaries, Other aged beneficiaries, and Medicare Only beneficiaries. (An update file records benefits in December 2000 and earnings in 1991–1999.) Each group is available as a ZIP download that extracts to a raw ASCII file.

Contact

statistics@ssa.gov

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Other Public-Use Files

Benefits & Earnings, 2004
Earnings, 2006
Field Office Listing, 2016
OASDI, 2001 Data
SSI, 2001 Data
SSI Summary Data, 2010

Disclaimer

These data files are available for research. Any findings and conclusions derived from analyses of these data are solely the researcher(s) and do not reflect those of the Social Security Administration.