The Feasibility and Importance of Adding Measures of Actual Experience to Cross-Sectional Data Collection

Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn

No 5873, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics data and data from a 2008 telephone survey of adults conducted by Westat for the Princeton Data Improvement Initiative (PDII) to explore the importance and feasibility of adding retrospective questions about actual work experience to cross-sectional data sets. We demonstrate that having such actual experience data is important for analyzing women's post-school human capital accumulation, residual wage inequality, and the gender pay gap. Further, our PDII survey results show that it is feasible to collect actual experience data in cross-sectional telephone surveys like the March Current Population Survey annual supplement.

Keywords: gender; microeconomic data collection; human capital; work experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 J16 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2011-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: Journal of Labor Economics, 2013, 31 (2, Part 2), 17-58

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Feasibility and Importance of Adding Measures of Actual Experience to Cross-Sectional Data Collection (2013)
Working Paper: The Feasibility and Importance of Adding Measures of Actual Experience to Cross-Sectional Data Collection (2011)
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