The Sensitivity of Economic Statistics to Coding Errors in Personal Identifiers

John Abowd () and Lars Vilhuber

Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Technical Papers from Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau

Abstract: In this paper, we describe the sensitivity of small-cell flow statistics to coding errors in the identity of the underlying entities. Specifically, we present results based on a comparison of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) before and after correcting for such errors in SSN-based identifiers in the underlying individual wage records. The correction used involves a novel application of existing statistical matching techniques. It is found that even a very conservative correction procedure has a sizable impact on the statistics. The average bias ranges from 0.25 percent up to 15 percent for flow statistics, and up to 5 percent for payroll aggregates.

Keywords: Flow statistics; Probabilistic matching; Transitions; Tenure; Job flows; Job creation; QWI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2002-10, Revised 2003-03
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published in Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, April 2005, pages 133-152.

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/tp/tp-2002-17.pdf Revised version, 2003 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Sensitivity of Economic Statistics to Coding Errors in Personal Identifiers (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:tpaper:2002-17

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