Estimating Measurement Error in Annual Job Earnings: A Comparison of Survey and Administrative Data

A-Tier
Journal: Review of Economics and Statistics
Year: 2013
Volume: 95
Issue: 5
Pages: 1451-1467

Authors (2)

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

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. © 2013 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:tpr:restat:v:95:y:2013:i:5:p:1451-1467
Journal Field
General
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-24