Cor880 11/15/05 GPENS - Pensions Module For more information on the Pensions Module see Appendix Q. OVERVIEW In 1993, the scope of the pensions section was very narrow and focused primarily on the respondent. Information about coverage and benefit eligibility age was collected for employer provided pensions and IRA/Keogh plans; for all other retirement plans only participation was noted. The sole spousal question ascertained coverage through a pension plan from an employer. By 2004, the sample had aged into retirement making it essential to cover pensions in considerably greater detail. In the 2004 wave, the pensions section covered types of plans respondents were receiving and any benefits respondents were receiving from these plans. If they were not, they were asked when they would become eligible, and how much they expected to receive. (If they were currently receiving benefits, this information was collected in the income module.) In replicates seven through nine the pensions section queried married respondents in more detail about the coverage that would continue after their death for the surviving spouse. Most of the same information was collected from the spouse throughout the pensions section. A retirement attitudes section followed. All respondents were asked if they considered themselves completely, partly, or not at all retired. For those who had retired, the month and year of retirement were ascertained. Respondents who had not retired were asked when they planned on retiring and whether their spouse would retire at that time. Fifty percent of the respondents (conditioned on the RETFLAG) were asked about their current or expected post-retirement living standards, and about their post-retirement relationship with their spouse. Unfolding brackets followed questions asking for dollar amounts in this section. Associated with these items are four variables (identified by the eight characters of the variable name) detailing the information collected in the bracketing sequence. The character "b" is associated with a summary variable, "u" and "l" denote the upper and lower bounds and "e" indicates the entry point into the bracketing sequence. During the interview, interviewers had a chance to leave notes with additional information obtained from the respondents. The WLS staff reviewed and processed these notes using a standardized set of decision rules for each section. In many cases processing the notes resulted in changes to the coded responses which created inconsistencies in the skip pattern of the CASES instrument. While we put considerable effort into adjusting such discrepancies, we could not eliminate them all. Occasionally, notes indicated problematic cases due to the lack of specific information or, conversely, cases that contained extra information that was important enough to retain. In such instances we created a flag, identified by the character "f" and attached it to the variable name, for the affected variable. BRIEF VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS GT101RE-GT111RE Current / expected pension – type, benefit receipt and eligibility (Respondent) GT101SP-GT111SP Current / expected pension – benefit receipt and eligibility (Spouse) GT112RE-GT121RE Retirement experience / outlook on retirement GT122RE-GT124SP Pension plan details (last 3 replicates of the survey) PROBLEMS Problems occurred in the coding of the Cases instrument and during the interviewing process. Problems with the instrument that affected codes for analysis variables are included as notes with the affected variables in the codebook. Details regarding the problems with individual cases which occurred during the interviewing process can be found in the *private* subcor890a. PEOPLE Liz Rainwater, Kamil Sicinski, Wes Taylor - Coding of Sibling module for Cases instrument. Kamil Sicinski- Checking of notes, making corrections, coding/supervising coding of open-ended responses, and writing the COR. Liz Rainwater, Kamil Sicinski - Writing code to create analysis variables, making corrections to raw data, and writing the COR.