National Beneficiary Survey (NBS) Round Seven

General NBS Round Seven Documentation
Public Use Files
        Public Use File Round Seven Documentation
        Public Use Round Seven Data Files

National Beneficiary Survey (NBS) Round Seven

In 2019, we fielded the round seven NBS to three samples: (1) a sample of all beneficiaries (the Representative Beneficiary Sample, or RBS), (2) a cross-sectional sample of beneficiaries who had recently maintained a minimum level of earnings for a sustained period (a cross-sectional “successful worker” sample, or cross-sectional SWS), and (3) a longitudinal sample of round six NBS respondents who were successful workers at the time of their 2017 interview (a longitudinal SWS). The cross-sectional SWS and longitudinal SWS samples were limited to SSI and SSDI beneficiaries who were eligible for the RBS but were considered “successful workers” because they had earnings above SSA’s monthly non-blind substantial gainful activity (SGA) level ($1,170 in 2017 and $1,220 in 2019) for a minimum of three consecutive calendar months. We also required that their successful work occurred no more than six months prior to their interview, so that details about their work were still fresh.

For round seven, we completed interviews with 4,008 individuals in the national sample of beneficiaries and 3,016 from the cross-sectional Successful Worker Sample, and 2,068 from the longitudinal Successful Worker Sample for a total of 9,092 interviews completed across the three sub-samples. Because the RBS and cross-sectional SWS samples were drawn independently, individuals could be selected for both samples. After removing a small number of duplicates, the number of unique completed interviews was 8,823. The weighted response rate for the Representative Beneficiary Sample was 54.7 percent, 41.0 percent for the cross-sectional Successful Worker Sample, and 54.5 percent for the longitudinal Successful Worker Sample.

The files below contain the final weights for the NBS Round 7 data. As noted in the User’s Guide (Sections II.2, II.3, IV.b, VI.A, and VI.C) the sample was drawn from a provisional sample frame which did not include all successful workers due to lags in the reporting and posting of earnings for some beneficiaries. Because of these lags, SSA earnings information remains substantially incomplete for up to three years after work occurs. As a consequence, the prior NBS Round 7 data files that were released in February 2021 included provisional weights. The 2023 NBS round 7 files below have final weights based on updated November 2022 information, which provides complete earnings information for the 2019 NBS sample.

General NBS Round Seven Documentation

We are providing the following NBS documentation in PDF format (these documents relate to the full restricted use version of the NBS data, but most of the information in these files is applicable to the public use files as well):

NBS R7 Editing, Coding, Weighting, and Imputation Report
NBS R7 Data Quality Report
NBS R7 User's Guide
NBS R7 Questionnaire
NBS R7 Non-Response Bias Report

Public Use Files

The public use files are available for the round seven Representative Beneficiary Sample and for the Representative Beneficiary Samples from earlier rounds. For more information on the public use files, visit the public use files page.

Public Use Files Round Seven Documentation

We are providing the following NBS documentation in PDF format:
NBS R7 PUF Codebook

Public Use Round Seven Data Files

We are providing the following NBS data file in SAS 9.4 format:
r7nbspuf112122_sas.zip

We are providing the following NBS data file in CSV format:
r7nbspuf112122_csv.zip

We are providing the following NBS data file in Stata format:
r7nbspuf112122_stata.zip