Income reporting behaviour in sample surveys

Andrea Neri and Roberta Zizza

No 777, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: This paper analyses respondents' behaviour when reporting their income sources in sample surveys and presents a method to deal with response error. Survey data relating to the number of earning recipients and to amounts received are validated using external information from administrative and statistical sources. Our findings suggest that the response bias on household income is about 12 per cent of reported figures. Misreporting is particularly severe for income from self-employment, financial assets and rents, as well as from secondary jobs. As to the distribution of response error, about 15 per cent of respondents show a high probability of misreporting. Misreporting is more diffuse among males, the older, the self-employed and respondents at the higher end of the earnings distribution.

Keywords: income distribution; response error; item response theory; SHIW; data accuracy. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 J65 L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/temi-disc ... 0777/en_tema_777.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:bdi:wptemi:td_777_10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().