Hello,
I’m trying to measure access to retirement either through pensions, savings for retirement, 401K plans, DB/DC plans, etc. I was wondering if the INCRETIR variable would be a good variable to gauge this. If not, what other variable could I use? After finding the appropriate variable, I need to narrow down my data to the county I live in (Ventura County, CA). If anyone has any information on this, I’d be very appreciative. Thank you.
INCRETIR will only identify those individuals who reported received retirement, survivor, and disability pension income, other than Social Security in the past 12 months (for ACS). This is not a perfect measure of who has access to retirement, especially if you are wanting to include people who were not currently retired. I don’t believe there are any variables that directly measure access to retirement funds.
Ventura County, CA can be identified in the by STATEFIP==6 (California) and COUNTY==1110 (Ventura County). Currently, the COUNTY variable in the 1-year 2012 ACS file in IPUMS-USA does not identify Ventura County, however the PUMAs 11101-11106 (when STATEFIP==6) do identify Ventura County in 2012. With the next update to the IPUMS-USA website Ventura County will be identified for the 1-year 2012 ACS. I hope this helps.