Social policy targeting and binary information transfer between surveys

Daniel Gottlieb () and Leonid Kushnir

Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), 2009, vol. 3, No 2009-30, 16 pages

Abstract: In this paper we develop a methodology for identifying a population group surveyed latently in the (target) survey relevant for further processing, for example poverty calculations, but surveyed explicitly in another (source) survey, not suitable for such processing. Identification is achieved by transferring the binary information from the source survey to the target survey by means of a logistic regression determining group affiliation in the source survey by use of variables available also in the target survey. In the proposed methodology we improve on common matching procedures by optimizing the cut-value of the probability which assigns group affiliation in the target survey. This contrasts with the commonly used Hosmer-Lemeshov cut-values for binary categorization, which equates between the sensitivity and specificity curves. Instead we improve group identification by minimizing the sum of total errors as a percent of total true outcomes. The Jewish ultra-orthodox population in Israel serves as a case study. This idiosyncratic community, committed to the observance of the Bible is only latently observed in the surveys typically used for poverty calculation. It is explicitly captured in the social survey, which is not suitable for poverty measurement. This procedure is useful for ex-post enhancement of survey data in general.

Keywords: Group identification; binary variables; optimal cutoff value; poverty; targeting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C15 D63 I38 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2009-30
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/27724/1/602501393.PDF (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Policy Targeting and Binary Information Transfer between Surveys (2009)
Working Paper: Social Policy Targeting and Binary Information Transfer between Surveys (2006)
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:ifweej:200930

DOI: 10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2009-30

Access Statistics for this article

Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020) is currently edited by Dennis J. Snower

More articles in Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020) from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().