Burton, J;
Crossley, TF;
Fisher, P;
Gaia, A;
Jackle, A;
(2020)
Understanding and reducing income reporting error in household surveys.
(Understanding Society Working Paper Series
2020-01).
Institute for Social and Economic Research: Colchester, UK.
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Abstract
Household surveys remain a key data source for measuring living standards and inequality. Survey data on incomes are known to suffer from reporting and non-response errors. In this paper, we implement and test a method that attempts to reduce errors directly in the data collection process, rather than mitigating them econometrically at the analysis stage. We experimentally test two versions of an Editable Summary Screen. We find that both versions elicit improvements in data quality that are large enough to change measured inequality. The experiment also provides new evidence on the nature of errors in survey income data.
| Type: | Working / discussion paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Understanding and reducing income reporting error in household surveys |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/research/pu... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | income, measurement error, misreporting |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10192931 |
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