The Feasibility and Importance of Adding Measures of Actual Experience to Cross-Sectional Data Collection

Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn

No 17241, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics data and data from a 2008 telephone survey of adults conducted by Westat for the Princeton Data Improvement Initiative (PDII) to explore the importance and feasibility of adding retrospective questions about actual work experience to cross-sectional data sets. We demonstrate that having such actual experience data is important for analyzing women's post-school human capital accumulation, residual wage inequality, and the gender pay gap. Further, our PDII survey results show that it is feasible to collect actual experience data in cross-sectional telephone surveys like the March Current Population Survey annual supplement.

JEL-codes: C81 J16 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ltv
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Published as Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2013. "The Feasibility and Importance of Adding Measures of Actual Experience to Cross-Sectional Data Collection," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(S1), pages S17 - S58.

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Working Paper: The Feasibility and Importance of Adding Measures of Actual Experience to Cross-Sectional Data Collection (2011)
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