A test for selection in matched administrative earnings data

Jesse Bricker and Gary V. Engelhardt ()
Additional contact information
Jesse Bricker: Federal Reserve Board, Postal: USA.
Gary V. Engelhardt: Syracuse University, Postal: 426 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA.

Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, 2014, issue 4, 247-255

Abstract: The matching of administrative records to labor-market surveys is both commonly done and represents an important innovation in the measurement of earnings. However, a potential problem is that this process might introduce sample-selection bias. Individuals typically must give informed consent to have their earnings matched, and consenters may display systematically different labor-market behavior than non-consenters. In this paper, we use the differential timing of the consent process to test whether individuals in the Health and Retirement Study who consented represent a non-random, thus biased sample. In particular, we find that for both men and women there is a general pattern of negative selection across three measures of pre-entry labor-market behavior: labor-force participation, self-employment, and earnings.

Keywords: Earnings; selection bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:iosjes:0022

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