Search Results
Title: Trends in Earnings Dispersion in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Current Population Survey
Resulting in 1 citation.
| 1. |
Handcock, Mark S. Morris, Martina Bernhardt, Annette |
|
Trends in Earnings Dispersion in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Current Population Survey Working Paper 98-14, Population Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, April 1998. Also: http://athens.pop.psu.edu/allen/WPapersSer.cfm?series=1998 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Population Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University Keyword(s): Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Earnings; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Wage Differentials; Wages Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. In an unpublished but widely cited paper, Gottschalk and Moffitt (1997) benchmark earnings trends from 1979-88 in three major longitudinal data sets -- the Michigan Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID) the National Longitudinal Survey (NLSB) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) -- against the CPS. They find that the NLSY has both significantly lower variance in reported annual earnings, and a negative trend in variance over time. As this stands in sharp contrast to the primary "stylized fact" of increasing earnings variance during the 80's, the findings raise serious questions about the validity of the NLSY for research on recent trends in inequality. In this paper we update the Gottschalk and Moffitt comparison of the NLSY and CPS through 1994 and use additional analyses to locate the sources of, and potential explanations for, the discrepancy between the two data sets. We find no significant difference in the trend in earnings dispersion among full-time, full-year workers between the two surveys. The discrepancy reported by Gottschalk and Moffitt appears to be due to the lower mean and greater variance in reported earnings among those who work part-time and/or part-year in the CPS. This suggests the problem stems from underreported earnings in the CPS, rather than errors in the NLSY. |
|
|
Bibliography Citation
Handcock, Mark S., Martina Morris and Annette Bernhardt. "Trends in Earnings Dispersion in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Current Population Survey." Working Paper 98-14, Population Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, April 1998. |