During a baseline simulation, the form NonReporterAdjustment provides the user with an additional alignment adjustment to help in those last stages of the alignment when there are a few problem areas that cannot be made better without making something equally important substantially worse. This adjustment helps overcome two limitations of the current participation methodology:

1) Although there is a way to prevent all eligible non-reporters from participating, the ability to make eligible non-reporters participate is constrained by the probability of participation.

2) The probabilities of correct response and their adjustments give only rough and indirect control over what goes on at the individual cell level (e.g., unit type x, benefit level y, state z, and immigrant status t).

This new adjustment takes place in a baseline simulation. It is made as one final adjustment after the participation decision has been made. It only affects eligible non-reporters, and it makes use of information input by the user through this simple form. The form indicates what percentage of particular types of eligible non-reporters should be changed from participants to non-participants, or from non-participants to participants. The form can be changed from year to year as necessary to target different problem areas in each year.

Let's say that we want 5 percent of eligible non-reporters who live in California, who are in basic non-earner units, are naturalized citizens, and are not currently participating to be made into participants. In addition, we want 10 percent of eligible non-reporters who live in New York, who are in basic earner units , are refugees, and are participating to be made into nonparticipants. The NonReporterAdjustment form would look something like this:

Enter 0

If FipsStateCode=6 and AnnualUnitType=2 and CorrectedCitizenship=2 then return .05

If FipsStateCode=36 and AnnualUnitType=1 and CorrectedCitizenship=3 then return -.10

Two program rules--NonReporterAdjTANF and NonReporterAdjSSF--facilitate the coding of the NonReporter Adjustment Form. NonReporterAdjTANF contains the percentage of eligible non-reporters, by unit type, to be changed from non-participants to participants (if positive) or from participants to non-participants (if negative). NonReporterAdjSSF works the same way for the SSF caseload. These values may be over-ridden by other values provided through the NonReporterAdjustment form.