Estimating measurement error in annual job earnings: A comparison
of survey and administrative data
Review of Economics and Statistics, 95 (5):
1451--1467 (2013)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.