Trends in Earnings Volatility Using Linked Administrative and Survey Data

Abstract

We document trends in earnings volatility separately by gender using unique linked survey data from the CPS ASEC and Social Security earnings records for the tax years spanning 1995–2015. The exact data link permits us to focus on differences in measured volatility from earnings nonresponse, survey attrition, and measurement between survey and administrative earnings data reports, while holding constant the sampling frame. Our results for both men and women suggest that the level and trend in volatility is similar in the survey and administrative data, showing substantial business-cycle sensitivity among men but no overall trend among continuous workers, while women demonstrate no change in earnings volatility over the business cycle but a declining trend. A substantive difference emerges with the inclusion of imputed earnings among survey nonrespondents, suggesting that users of the ASEC drop earnings nonrespondents.

Keywords:

• Attrition
• Business cycle
• Nonresponse
• Nonworkers

Supplementary Materials

The supplementary materials included in the zip file ZHB_programs_supplement.zip include a PDF file as a supplementary appendix to the published paper entitled ZHB_JBES_unblinded_Supplement_Final.pdf. This supplement contains a description of the data, along with a number of robustness checks. In addition the zip file contains a series of Stata DO files for estimation of our results. The files FiguresX_clean.do (for $X=1-5$) produce each of the respective Figure 1–Figure 5 in the published paper. The files FigureS-Y_clean.do (for $Y=1-11$) produce the respective FigureS-1 to FigureS-11 in the Supplement. The files TableS-Z_clean.do (for $Z=1-3$) produce the respective TableS-1 to TableS-3 in the Supplement.

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the comments of the Editor, an Associate Editor, and two anonymous reviewers on an earlier version. We also benefitted from the insights of Robert Moffitt, Michael Keane, Claudia Sahm, and seminar participants at the Winter Econometric Society Meetings, the Society of Labor Economists, the Western Economic Association, the JPMorgan Chase Institute Conference on Economic Research, the Longitudinal and Administrative Data for Distributional Analysis Workshop at University of Essex, Southern Economic Association, University of Pittsburgh, and Washington Center for Equitable Growth Measuring Volatility Workshop. The linked ASEC-DER data used in this project were obtained as part of an internal-to-Census project (DMS 1170) and analyzed in a secure federal facility at the Kentucky Research Data Center in Lexington, KY. Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Census Bureau or any sponsoring agency. All results have been reviewed by the Disclosure Review Board to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed (CBDRB-FY21-POP001-0150).

Disclosure Statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

Bollinger and Ziliak are grateful for the financial support of the National Science Foundation grant 1918828 and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.