ESTIMATING MEASUREMENT ERROR IN ANNUAL JOB EARNINGS: A COMPARISON OF SURVEY AND ADMINISTRATIVE DATA

We propose a new methodology that does not assume a prior specification of the statistical properties of the measurement errors and treats all sources as noisy measures of some underlying true value. The unobservable true value can be represented as a weighted average of all available measures, usin...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The review of economics and statistics 2013-12, Vol.95 (5), p.1451-1467
Main Authors: Abowd, John M., Stinson, Martha H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Censuses
Earnings
Error
Estimating techniques
Income
Measurement
Measurement errors
Methodology
Research methodology
Studies
U.S.A
Value
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We propose a new methodology that does not assume a prior specification of the statistical properties of the measurement errors and treats all sources as noisy measures of some underlying true value. The unobservable true value can be represented as a weighted average of all available measures, using weights that must be specified a priori unless there has been a truth audit. The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) survey jobs are linked to Social Security Administration earnings data, creating two potential annual earnings observations. The reliability statistics for both sources are quite similar except for cases where the SIPP used imputations for some missing monthly earnings reports.
ISSN:0034-6535
1530-9142
DOI:10.1162/REST_a_00352