Reconciling Trends in U.S. Male Earnings Volatility: Results from Survey and Administrative Data

Robert Moffitt, Christopher Bollinger, Charles M. Hokayem, Emily Wiemers (), John Abowd (), Michael Carr, Kevin Lee McKinney (), Sisi Zhang and James Ziliak
Additional contact information
Charles M. Hokayem: U.S. Census Bureau
Emily Wiemers: University of Massachusetts Boston
Michael Carr: University of Massachusetts Boston
Kevin Lee McKinney: U.S. Census Bureau
Sisi Zhang: Jinan University

No 15093, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: There is a large literature on earnings and income volatility in labor economics, household finance, and macroeconomics. One strand of that literature has studied whether individual earnings volatility has risen or fallen in the U.S. over the last several decades. There are strong disagreements in the empirical literature on this important question, with some studies showing upward trends, some showing downward trends, and some showing no trends. Some studies have suggested that the differences are the result of using flawed survey data instead of more accurate administrative data. This paper summarizes the results of a project attempting to reconcile these findings with four different data sets and six different data series--three survey and three administrative data series, including two which match survey respondent data to their administrative data. Using common specifications, measures of volatility, and other treatments of the data, four of the six data series show a lack of any significant long-term trend in male earnings volatility over the last 20-to-30+ years when differences across the data sets are properly accounted for. A fifth data series (the PSID) shows a positive net trend but small in magnitude. A sixth, administrative, data set, available only since 1998, shows no net trend 1998-2011 and only a small decline thereafter. Many of the remaining differences across data series can be explained by differences in their cross-sectional distribution of earnings, particularly differences in the size of the lower tail. We conclude that the data sets we have analyzed, which include many of the most important available, show little evidence of any significant trend in male earnings volatility since the mid-1980s.

Keywords: administrative data; earnings; volatility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2022-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15093.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Reconciling Trends in U.S. Male Earnings Volatility: Results from Survey and Administrative Data (2022)
Working Paper: Reconciling Trends in U.S. Male Earnings Volatility: Results from Survey and Administrative Data (2022)
Working Paper: Reconciling Trends in U.S. Male Earnings Volatility: Results from Survey and Administrative Data (2022)
Working Paper: Reconciling Trends in U.S. Male Earnings Volatility: Results from Survey and Administrative Data (2022)
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:dp15093

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 ().