Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T09:48:01.723Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A CAUTIONARY NOTE ON USING (MARCH) CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY AND PANEL STUDY OF INCOME DYNAMICS DATA TO STUDY WORKER MOBILITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2012

Gueorgui Kambourov  and
Iourii Manovskii
Gueorgui Kambourov*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Iourii Manovskii
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
*
Address correspondence to: Gueorgui Kambourov, Department of Economics, University of Toronto, 150 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5S 3G7, Canada; e-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), with its annual demographic March supplement, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) are the leading sources of data on worker reallocation across occupations, industries, and firms. Much of the active current research is based on these data. In this paper, we contrast these data sets as sources of data for measuring the dynamics of worker mobility. We find that (i) (March) CPS data are characterized by a substantial amount of noise when it comes to identifying occupational and industry switches; (ii) March CPS data provide a poor measure of annual occupational mobility and, instead, most likely measure mobility over a much shorter period; (iii) (the changes in) the procedure to impute missing data have a dramatic effect on the interpretation of the CPS data in, e.g., the trend in occupational mobility. The most important shortcomings of the PSID are the facts that (i) occupational and industry affiliation data are available in most years at an annual frequency; (ii) the PSID's sample, by design, excludes immigrants arriving in the United States after 1968; (iii) the Retrospective Occupation–Industry Files with reliable occupation and industry affiliation data are available only until 1980.

Keywords

Current Population SurveyPanel Study of Income DynamicsOccupational MobilityWorker MobilityCoding ErrorImputation Procedures
Type
Notes
Information
Macroeconomic Dynamics , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 172 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Artuc, Erhan, Chaudhuri, Shubham, and McLaren, John (2007) Trade Shocks and Labor Adjustment: A Structural Empirical Approach. Working Paper 13465, National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bollinger, Christopher R. and Hirsch, Barry T. (2006) Match bias from earnings imputation in the Current Population Survey: The case of imperfect matching. Journal of Labor Economics 24, 483–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Charles, Duncan, Greg J., and Stafford, Frank P. (1996) Data watch: The Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Journal of Economic Perspectives 10, 155–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, James N. and Light, Audrey (1992) Interpreting panel data on job tenure. Journal of Labor Economics 10, 219–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Steven J. (2008) The decline of job loss and why it matters. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 98, 263–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickens, William T. and Katz, Lawrence F. (1987) Inter-industry Wage Differences and Theories of Wage Determination. Working Paper 2271, National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncan, Greg J. and Hill, Daniel H. (1989) Assessing the quality of household panel survey data: The case of the PSID. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 7, 441–451.Google Scholar
Faberman, Jason (2008) Job Flows, Jobless Recoveries, and the Great Moderation. Working Paper 08-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fallick, Bruce (1993) The industrial mobility of displaced workers. Journal of Labor Economics 11, 302–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feng, Shuaizhang (2001) The longitudinal matching of current population surveys: A proposed algorithm. Journal of Economic and Social Measurement 27, 71–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, John, Gottschalk, Peter, and Moffitt, Robert (1998) An Analysis of Sample Attrition in Panel Data: The Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Technical Working Paper 0220, National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckman, James J. and LaFontain, Paul A. (2006) Bias-corrected estimates of GED returns. Journal of Labor Economics 24, 661–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, Barry T. and Schumacher, Edward J. (2004) Match bias in wage gap estimates due to earnings imputation. Journal of Labor Economics 22, 689–722.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jovanovic, Boyan (1979) Job matching and the theory of turnover. Journal of Political Economy 87, 972–990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jovanovic, Boyan and Moffitt, Robert (1990) An estimate of a sectoral model of labor mobility. Journal of Political Economy 98, 827–852.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kambourov, Gueorgui and Manovskii, Iourii (2008) Rising occupational and industry mobility in the United States: 1968–1997. International Economic Review 49, 41–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kambourov, Gueorgui and Manovskii, Iourii (2009a) Occupational mobility and wage inequality. Review of Economic Studies 76, 731–759.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kambourov, Gueorgui and Manovskii, Iourii (2009b) Occupational specificity of human capital. International Economic Review 50, 63–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krueger, Alan B. and Summers, Lawrence H. (1988) Efficiency wages and the inter-industry wage structure. Econometrica 56, 259–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Donghoon (2005) An estimable dynamic general equilibrium model of work, schooling, and occupational choice. International Economic Review 46, 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Donghoon and Wolpin, Kenneth I. (2006) Intersectoral labor mobility and the growth of the service sector. Econometrica 74, 1–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lillard, Lee, Smith, James P., and Welch, Finis (1986) What do we really know about wages? The importance of nonreporting and Census imputation. Journal of Political Economy 94, 489–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Runjuan and Trefler, Daniel (2008) Much Ado about Nothing: American Jobs and the Rise of Service Outsourcing to China and India. Working Paper 14061, National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucas, Robert Jr., and Prescott, Edward (1974) Equilibrium search and unemployment. Journal of Economic Theory 7, 188–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Madrian, Brigitte and Lefgren, Lars (2000) An approach to longitudinally matching Current Population Surveys (CPS) respondents. Journal of Economic and Social Measurement 26, 31–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mathiowetz, Nancy (1992) Errors in reports of occupations. Public Opinion Quarterly 56, 352–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCall, Brian P. (1990) Occupational matching: A test of sorts. Journal of Political Economy 98, 45–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellow, Wesley and Sider, Hall (1983) Accuracy of response in labor market surveys: Evidence and implications. Journal of Labor Economics 1, 331–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moscarini, Giuseppe and Thomsson, Kaj (2007) Occupational and job mobility in the US. Scandinavian Journal of Economics 109, 807–836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moscarini, Giuseppe and Vella, Francis (2002) Aggregate Worker Reallocation and Occupational Mobility in the United States: 1971–2000. Working Paper 02/18, The Institute for Fiscal Studies.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moscarini, Giuseppe and Vella, Francis (2003) Aggregate worker reallocation and occupational mobility in the United States: 1976–2000. Manuscript, Yale University.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Kevin M. and Topel, Robert H. (1987) The evolution of unemployment in the United States: 1968–1985. In Fischer, Stanley (ed.), NBER Macroeconomics Annual, pp. 11–58. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Oh, H. Lock and Scheuren, Frederick J. (1980) Estimating the variance impact of missing CPS income data. Proceedings of the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association, 408–415.Google Scholar
Polivka, Anne E. and Rothgeb, Jennifer M. (1993) Overhauling the Current Population Survey: Redesigning the questionnaire. Monthly Labor Review 116, 10–28.Google Scholar
PSID (1999) A Panel Study of Income Dynamics: 1968–1980 Retrospective Occupation–Industry Files Documentation (release 1). Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.Google Scholar
Rothgeb, Jennifer M. and Cohany, Sharon R. (1992) The revised CPS questionnaire: Differences between the current and the proposed questionnaires. Proceedings of the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association, 649–654.Google Scholar
Stewart, Jay (2002) Recent Trends in Job Stability and Job Security: Evidence from the March CPS. Working Paper 356, Bureau of Labor Statistics.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1976) Money Income and Poverty Status of Families and Persons in the United States: 1975 and 1974 Revisions (Advance Report). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, Current Population Reports, Series P-60, No. 103.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (2002) Current Population Survey–-Design and Methodology. Technical Paper 63RV.Google Scholar