Survey Non-Response and Unemployment Duration

Gerard van den Berg, Maarten Lindeboom () and Peter Dolton

No 1303, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Social surveys are often used to estimate unemployment duration distributions. Survey non-response may then cause a bias. We study this using a unique dataset that combines survey information of individual workers with administrative records of the same workers. The latter provide information on unemployment durations and personal characteristics of all survey respondents and non-respondents. We develop a method to empirically distinguish between two explanations for a bias in results based on only survey data: (1) selectivity due to related unobserved determinants of unemployment durations and non-response, and (2) a causal effect of a job exit on non-response. The latter may occur even in fully homogeneous populations. The methodology exploits variation in the timing of the duration outcome relative to the survey moment. The results show evidence for both explanations. We discuss implications for standard methods to deal with non-response bias.

Keywords: event history; hazard rate; non-response bias; unemployment measurement; sample selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C23 C41 C42 C81 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2004-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 2006, 169 (3), 585-604

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp1303.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Survey non-response and unemployment duration (2004)
Working Paper: Survey Non-response and Unemployment Duration (2004)
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:iza:izadps:dp1303

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().