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Title: Response Error in Reporting Starting Wages
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Branden, Laura Pergamit, Michael R. |
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Response Error in Reporting Starting Wages Presented: Danvers, MA, American Association of Public Opinion Research Annual Conference, May 1994 Cohort(s): NLS General, NLSY79 Publisher: American Association of Public Opinion Research Keyword(s): Data Quality/Consistency; Human Capital; Job Tenure; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Wage Determination; Wages Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Human capital models in labor economics emphasize, among other things, the returns to tenure on a job. While longitudinal data improve these measures compared with cross-sectional data, complete wage profiles for an individual in any household data set do not exist. Generally, the available data consist of a series of contemporaneous wage observations gathered at infrequent intervals, usually once each year. This is the standard in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and in the various National Longitudinal Surveys, the primary longitudinal data sets in labor economics. Since it is unlikely that we observe a person exactly when they begin their job, we must retrospectively ask their starting wage. Retrospective questions tax people's memories in different ways depending on the nature of the information to be retrieved, how it is stored in memory, the length of recall required, the saliency of the event, etc. Starting wages are expected to be perhaps the most easily recalled wages other than the current wage because the starting wage is connected with a specific event, i.e. beginning work for a given employer. Therefore, an investigation of individuals' reports of starting wages are probably the most accurate of any wage reports other than their current wage. In this paper, we use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), taking advantage of a skip pattern error which resulted in re-asking most of the sample about the starting wage for their employer at two consecutive interviews. Because we never know the true starting wage, this paper examines the consistency in response between the two answers given at two different interviews, roughly one year apart. |
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Bibliography Citation
Branden, Laura and Michael R. Pergamit. "Response Error in Reporting Starting Wages." Presented: Danvers, MA, American Association of Public Opinion Research Annual Conference, May 1994. |