Estimating the Impact of Alternative Multiple Imputation Methods on Longitudinal Wealth Data

Markus Grabka and Christian Westermeier

VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: Statistical Analysis in surveys is often facing missing data. As case-wise deletion and single imputation prove to have undesired properties, multiple imputation remains as a measure to handle this problem. In a longitudinal study, where for some missing values past or future data points might be available, the question arises how to successfully transform this advantage into better imputation models. In a simulation study the authors compare six combinations of cross-sectional and longitudinal imputation strategies for German wealth panel data (SOEP wealth module). The authors create simulation data sets by blanking out observed data points: they induce item non response into the data by both missing at random (MAR) and two separate missing not at random (MNAR) mechanisms. We test the performance of multiple imputation using chained equations (MICE), an imputation procedure for panel data known as the row-and-columns method and a regression specification with correction for sample selection including a stochastic error term. The regression and MICE approaches serve as fallback methods when only cross-sectional data is available. Even though the regression approach omits certain stochastic components and estimators based on its result are likely to underestimate the uncertainty of the imputation procedure, it performs weak against the MICE set-up. The row-and-columns method, a univariate method, performs well considering both longitudinal and cross-sectional evaluation criteria. These results show that if the variables which ought to be imputed are assumed to exhibit high state dependency, univariate imputation techniques such as the row-and-columns imputation should not be dismissed beforehand.

JEL-codes: C18 C46 C83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/100353/1/VfS_2014_pid_209.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc14:100353

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().